Open Access is the means of disseminating scholarly and scientific literature to researchers and anyone else who might benefit from accessing the results of publicly funded research. As a result, Open Access publications are digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber, 2012).
Why is Open Access important?
The easier it is to access a work, the more likely it is to be downloaded, read, used, and cited. For this reason, funding agencies such as NHMRC and ARC are increasingly placing Open Access conditions on publications resulting from their research grants.
Open Access models
There are a number of Open Access publishing models, with gold, green and Read and Publish Agreements being the most prominent at JCU:
Green Open Access: involves self-archiving the author accepted manuscript of a journal article in an institutional repository such as ResearchOnline@JCU. This model is free for authors.- Gold Open Access: allows for immediate unrestricted online access to the full text of a journal article on the publisher's website. This model usually requires author payment of a substantial article processing fee.
- Read and Publish Agreements: allow for immediate Open Access publishing on a journal's website. Read and Publish Agreements take JCU Library expenditure on journal subscriptions and repurpose costs to cover both reading and publishing in a fixed set of the publisher's journals. This model is free for authors.
Contact your Liaison Librarian to find out more.
