Open Access

Publishing open access allows content to be freely available online to anyone.

• Helps researchers to meet the mandate of major funding bodies like the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
• Helps enable Western Sydney University's key research objectives, such as achieving international recognition through high-quality research, encouraging and supporting research collaboration, fostering excellence from young researchers, and enhancing WSU's research environment.
• Increases the visibility and exposure of your research by making it available to a wider audience, e.g., researchers in developing countries, the public, and practitioners who don't have access to subscription journals.
• To potentially get a citation advantage (higher citation rates). See The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies.
• Provides free online access to research, not restricted to what your organisation can afford.

Open peer review models can support the transparency and integrity that are at the heart of Open Research.

• Open review content and open identities (‘published and signed’ peer review) support the integrity of the review process. While it can be argued that knowing each other’s identity may lead to biases and that publicly available feedback may have a negative effect on an author’s reputation, practising peer review ‘in the open’ increases awareness of possible biases and should help mitigate these concerns

• Having the content of the reports and any other comments (post-publication comments, interactions between reviewers and authors) publicly available offers readers further insights into the research reported and encourages more constructive peer review

• When the identities of the reviewers are known, reviewers get credit for the valuable input they have put into the publication

• Open peer reviews can be used as learning tools if they are available to students

• Open peer review can lead to constructive dialogue, inspire collaborations and play a role in public engagement if open to community feedback.

How to engage with open peer review

• If a journal with a traditional peer review model offers you the option to make your identity known, either as an author or as a reviewer, think about taking this option

• Consider publishing in journals (e.g., BMJ) or platforms (e.g., Wellcome Open Research, F1000Research) that support open review models as part of their default editorial process

• If you are on a journal's editorial board, consider putting forward this option to the journal.​​​​​

Watch this video by Professor Ginny Barbour for context on why there is a focus on open access.

Following are the main routes for open access.

Visit Open Access Australasia for additional details on the available types (routes) of open access and for information on Open Access & Copyright.

Before you commit to paying an APC, you must know why the journal charges you to publish your research article. There may be no requirement at all for you to pay an APC. Find out more in the Article processing charges (APC) step.