Open access

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Through licensing via an open licence (usually a Creative Commons License), freely available outputs can also be legally shared and reused. Therefore, open access is more than just free access.

The original definitions of open access were first proposed in Budapest in 2002, Berlin in 2003 and Bethesda in 2003.

- Definition and information sourced from Open Access Australasia 

1. Review UNSW Open Access Policy, UNSW Research Authorship, Publication and Dissemination Policy and any applicable contractual or funder requirements.
2. Make all co-authors aware of the requirements of the Open Access Policy and decide who is responsible for managing the manuscript as part of your authorship discussions.
3. If your journal is in a current UNSW open access publishing agreement the corresponding author must use their UNSW email address: name@unsw.edu.au when submitting to the journal.
4. At submission, include the UNSW Rights Retention Statement or similar language in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission.
5. Make sure you keep a copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM).
6. Upon publication, check that you have the appropriate version to deposit. Usually, this is the AAM.
7. Deposit appropriate version to the UNSW institutional repository UNSW institutional repository UNSWorks via Research Outputs System  (ROS). For information on how to deposit your thesis to UNSWorks see the depositing your thesis page.

Find out about the open access publishing agreements currently available through UNSW Library. Check your eligibility to publish under these agreements.

View Open access publishing guide.