Open Access

Open access refers to the free online access of scholarly information on the internet. This can be achieved by depositing material (within copyright) into an institutional or subject repository, and/or publishing in an open access journal. Much of this scholarship is indexed by Google Scholar, enabling instant, international exposure to research which benefits readers and authors alike.

Policy compliance

Publishing in an open access journal complies with the University ‘Open Access to Research Policy’ which states:

Subject to any intellectual property, commercial, privacy and/or ethical constraints researchers will, as soon as possible, make publications and data arising out of research openly available for re-use and citation. Research funding agreements may require that publications and data created through the funded research be made available within a defined timeframe.

For non-open access outputs, a publisher compliant version of the paper can be made freely available in ResearchDirect following an embargo period. The Library Research Team manages this process.

Note: Many journals require the underlying research datasets to be made freely available with the published article. Notify the Library of a dataset here and a staff member will be in touch to facilitate this process.

Why Open Access

Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown

Need assistance?
Please direct any queries to lib-research@westernsydney.edu.au