Open Access at Flinders University Library - Flinders University Library

Flinders University Library provides infrastructure to support open access to research, including both publishing open access and making existing outputs open access at no cost through university hosted platforms. The University's Open Access Policy has as its main principle that research outputs (including non-traditional research outputs) are required to be made open access, unless there is a justifiable reason. Researchers can choose the open access route that is most suitable to their research, with consideration to grant funding obligations.

Open access has the goal of empowering global equity in access to research outputs and removing barriers to access. Flinders University supports ethical and open research practices and aligns with the FAIR Principles: supporting Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable research and research outputs. Alongside FAIR Principles researchers should be aware of the CARE Principles which ensure that data is used ethically.

Useful links

Open access policy

Open access procedures

Creative commons licences

Strategic publishing

Research data management

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Benefits of open access

Grant requirements

How to make your work open access at Flinders

Share outputs via ResearchNow

ResearchNow can be used to make article manuscripts open access at no cost and to showcase a variety of research, including non-traditional research outputs

Share data through ROADS

Use the ROADS repository at Flinders to make your research datasets open access and reusable by others.

Publish reports & grey literature

Have your reports hosted by Flinders with a stable DOI and a registered ISBN to aid in discoverability.

Publish open through journals (Read & Publish)

View offers available for free and discounted open access publishing options in selected journals.

Go to a workshop

Attend a library workshop to learn more about publishing open access, avoiding predatory publishers, and sharing all kinds of outputs.

Adopt open research principles

Flinders University encourages researchers to learn about, adopt and encourage open research practices, where relevant or possible.

Benefits of open access

Open access to research outputs offers several benefits:

Without being behind a paywall, open access articles can be widely read, used and cited – this can help researchers find collaborators and diversify the readership of their research
Allows for compliance with open access mandates, resulting in increased accessibility of publicly funded research
Supports translation of research into practice with open licences, allowing other researchers to build on existing research quickly

Open Access Week

International Open Access Week is celebrated in the third week of October every year. It aims to raise awareness about the importance of making research information freely available to everyone.

Flinders University Library supports Open Access through Read & Publish agreements, as well as support and training for researchers using our Open Access repositories.

In 2024, Open Access Week was held from October 21-27. A recording is available of the keynote event, ‘Coffee, cake & Open Access: A researcher Q&A discussion’, which was held on Tuesday October 22nd in the Alere Function Centre.

This event included a keynote address from Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Performance and Impact), Professor Vincent Bulone, followed by a welcome address from Mr Prashant Pandey (Director of Library Services).

Both speakers then joined an engaging panel discussion moderated by Ms Liz Walkley Hall (Library Associate Director, Engagement and Scholarly Communications) and featuring Professor Tim Cavagnaro, Professor Raj Shekhawat, and Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu.

A recording is also available of the 2023 Open Access Week Launch Event, which celebrated the launch of the University’s new Open Access Policy.

^{Open Access infographic – Click to enlarge.

By Ginny Barbour, Stephanie Bradbury,

Paula Callan & Anne Walsh. CC-BY-NC.}

Open access requirements for grants

Researchers who have received grant funding should ensure they are aware of their funding body’s open access mandates and choose publishing avenues that comply with their grant conditions.

ARC and NHMRC advise against relying on the use of commercial, social media platforms such as ResearchGate  and Academia.edu as a way for meeting open access compliance requirements. Visit the open access policy requirements from ARC and NHMRC for more information.

ARC Grants

Recipients of an Australian Research Council grant will need to comply with the ARC Open Access Policy that requires most publications to be made open access within 12 months from publication date. For journal articles, this is preferably through depositing your accepted manuscript to be made open access at no cost through ResearchNow, or in an openly accessible public digital archive. You may also be able to publish open access at no cost by choosing a journal eligible for waived fees under a library Read & Publish agreement.

NHMRC Grants

All NHMRC grant holders are subject to the NHMRC Open Access Policy. It requires that all peer reviewed publications are published open access immediately, with a Creative Commons Attribution licence allowing reuse by others. There are several avenues through which this can be achieved:

By publishing open access at no cost in a journal covered by a library Read & Publish agreement
By publishing in a fully open access (gold OA) journal with payment of an APC, as long as that journal only offers open access publishing. Payment of an APC in a journal that offers regular subscription publishing is not congruent with the policy
Prior to submitting to a journal, add the prescribed rights statement (in italics below) to the manuscript. If the article is accepted for publication with this statement, then upload it to ResearchNow where it can be made open access immediately after article publication. Rights statement wording to be included:

This research was funded in whole or part by the National Health and Medical Research Council [Grant number]. For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.