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Open Access

Open access policies and mandates

WSU Open Access Policy

The Open Access to Research Policy sets out the requirements for Western Sydney University researchers to make publications from their research openly available via WSU's institutional repository, Research Profiles and Repository, as soon as possible following acceptance of the publication, taking into account any embargoes imposed by the publisher.

If publishers do not allow self-archiving, WSU authors are encouraged to request that the SPARC Author Addendum be included in the publishing contract:

'The Author has the right to publicly archive their revised, peer-reviewed personal version of their paper on their institutional website and their personal website, provided in all cases a link to the journal article on the Publisher website is included.'

Complying with funding mandates

Both the ARC and NHMRC have open access policies. See the ARC and NHMRC open access policy for further details on the following:

  • ARC requires any Research Outputs arising from an ARC-supported research Project must be made openly accessible within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication. "Research Output" includes all products (including Preprints or comparable resources) of an ARC-funded research Project that meet the definition of Research. Preprints are scholarly outputs uploaded by authors to a recognised publicly accessible platform and ideally searchable via a unique identifier or digital object identifier (DOI)
  • NHMRC requires all publications produced from NHMRC grants awarded under Grant Opportunity Guidelines to be made immediate open access ("publications" being peer-reviewed articles and peer-reviewed conference papers, either the Author Accepted Manuscript (postprint) or the Version of Record (publisher version))

Both ARC and NHMRC require:

  • the metadata be available in the institutional repository (Research Profiles and Repository) within 3 months of publication
  • research outputs to acknowledge funders, and include the funder grant ID.
  • Making a preprint openly available will not meet the OA policy requirements for ARC and NHMRC. These are the versions of papers before peer review
  • It is not advised to use social networking sites (e.g. ResearchGate) to achieve open access.
Note: Check your funding agreement if you have funding from another funding agency. Other funders (e.g. Wellcome Trust or Horizon 2020) have more onerous OA compliance requirements.
Funder mandates and open research

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