CRO - CSU Research Outputs - Frequently Asked Questions: General Information

Frequently Asked Questions: General Information

What is CRO?

CRO - CSU Research Output is an open access digital archive, also called an institutional repository. CRO includes CSU scholarship and research output of various types, including refereed journal articles, conference papers and creative works which meet the definition of research. The aim of CRO is to collect and make available to the world the research output produced by CSU. Information submitted to DIISR for the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) each year will be submitted to CRO, including pre-publication versions of each publication. This will form the bulk of the content and will ensure that current CSU research is internationally available. When full text of articles cannot be loaded into CRO for copyright reasons, the bibliographic citation will be loaded. Academic and research staff can ‘self archive’ their research output prior to 2008 into CRO. This allows research to be located through search engines and for copyright compliant links to full text articles attached to references in staff web pages. (See CRO Policy for CSU's Institutional Repository). CRO provides a stable and sustainable storage environment for digital versions of research output.

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What is an Institutional Repository?

Institutional Repositories (IR) are databases bringing together under one umbrella a university's published research output in digital form. Aiming to preserve and provide access to that research, IRs are an excellent vehicle for storing journal articles, conference papers and other ouputs. The majority of institutional repositories are 'open access', meaning that the works held within them are freely accessible and can be located using internet search engines such as Google Scholar.

There are an increasing number of scholarly digital repositories around the world. Some are discipline-based (e.g. CogPrints - cognitive sciences, arXiv - physics, mathematics), whilst others are institutional (e.g. Demetrius - Australian National University, QUT ePrints - Queensland University of Technology).

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What are the benefits of having papers in CRO?

When you search Google or Google.scholar for information you often come across freely available preprints of excellent research papers. These derive from the Institutional Repositories of universities around the world. Your articles on CRO are contributing to this scholarly information exchange and will be able to be located in the same way.

Further benefits of depositing your articles on CRO:

Creating a list of your publications with links to the full text: The list of publications on your website must be linked to full text versions of the articles or conference papers in CRO. This creates a permanent secure link to a copy of the article and ensures that a legal copy is available for downloading via your site. The Library will ensure copyright compliance and that the legal copy is loaded. Submission to CRO also ensures that your papers can be discovered using search engines - if they sit on personal or university web pages this is not necessarily the case.
Wider access to your papers: When you publish your paper in a journal, it can only be accessed by those who have a personal or institutional subscription to the journal. If, in addition to this, you deposit a copy of your paper in CRO, not only have you provided an additional access point, but you have provided a copy that can be accessed free of charge by everyone on the internet.
Enhanced research impact shown by increased citations: Wider access often leads to an increase in citations as more researchers (academics and students) are able to gain access to your research output. Institutional repositories have been shown to increase citation rates by 50-300%.
Safe storage of copyright compliant versions of your papers: Depositing copies of your papers in the CRO digital archive means peace of mind when your hard drive crashes. The material is backed up on a regular basis. The centralised IR brings together and simplifies the processes involved in dealing with intellectual property and copyright issues. The Library ensures that it uploads only versions of articles that meet copyright requirements. This may mean observing embargo periods or uploading preprint versions.
Facilitation of research sharing: If you receive requests for copies of your papers you can direct the requester to CRO where they may obtain a copy free of charge. This saves time and money. Publishing your paper on CRO reduces the amount of time between discovery and dissemination of research findings to scholarly communities
Showcase for CSU research output: Presently CSU research outputs are disseminated across thousands of different journals, publications and web sites around the world. Once CSU researchers and scholars begin to deposit electronic copies of their papers in CRO it will create a valuable showcase for their work. Within CRO, users are provided with the full citation for the formally published version. In many cases links are also provided.

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What if my paper is already freely available on a webpage?

Your paper may be available today but, unless you control the website it is on, can you guarantee that it will be available in the future? Conference websites often disappear after a short period. Web pages can be moved to different servers and, if a journal ceases to be published, its website may disappear.
With CRO operating there is no need to remove your paper from a current website. By depositing a copy in CRO you will be creating an additional access point. A link to the current web site or alternate location can be inserted in the record for your paper.

CRO provides a stable, secure web presence supported by the University. It also provides enhanced access to internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

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Is self-archiving the same as publishing?

No. Depositing an electronic copy of an academic paper in a discipline-based or institutional repository is known as 'self-archiving'. This is not the same as self-publishing.

For scholarly and scientific purposes publication requires meeting the quality standards of peer review and acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal. Therefore, self-archiving is NOT the same as publishing. It is a complementary process to peer review and journal publication rather than a replacement. Neither is self-archiving the same as self-publishing (vanity press).

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Is self-archiving legal?

Yes. For example, when any new work is created the author or creator holds the copyright and is free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g. by self-archiving). This means that the author can legally self-archive a paper they are about to submit to a journal for peer review and possible publication. This version is known as a preprint.

When authors submit the paper to a journal they are often asked to assign copyright to the publisher. This contract refers to the final, peer-reviewed version (the postprint). If all rights are assigned to the publisher this version of the paper cannot be legally self-archived without publisher permission. CRO staff will obtain this permission and upload the article where possible.

However, it is not always necessary to assign all rights to the publisher. Authors are strongly encouraged to retain their copyright, where possible, in their dealings with publishers.

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Will institutional repositories replace journals?

Institutional repositories are complementary to, rather than a replacement for, scholarly journals. The peer review process provided by journals is of critical importance to scholarship. However, the proliferation of institutional and discipline-based eprint repositories could accelerate changes that are currently taking place in the scholarly communication process.

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What about quality control?

Submissions to CRO are screened to ensure they satisfy all HERDC criteria and/or ERA criteria. All of the papers in CRO will be copies of peer reviewed academic papers. Books and chapters must be distributed by a recognised commercial publisher, and creative works must be accompanied by a statement outlining the research component of the work.

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Where can I find more information about the Open Archives Initiative?

The following papers provide a good overview of this topic:

Harnad, S. (2001) The self-archiving initiative: Freeing the refereed research literature online, Nature 410: 1024 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/naturenew.htm
Lynch, C.A. (2003) Institutional repositories: Essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age. ARL Bimonthly Report 226. http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/br226ir.pdf
Hitchcock, S., Bergmark, D., Brody, T., Gutteridge, C., Carr, L., Hall, W., Lagoze, C., Harnad S. (2002), Open Citation Linking, The Way Forward, D-Lib Magazine Volume 8 Number 10
Antelman, K. (2004) Do open-access articles have a greater research impact College and Research Libraries, Vol. 65 Issue 5, p372-382,

Relevant Websites:

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

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Can I search across a number of eprint repositories with one search?

Yes. Most repositories have adopted a common set of standards for describing their metadata. This means that they can be cross-searched. There are a number of search engines which can cross-search multiple repositories including:

For a full list of services, see the Open Archives Initiative Registered Service Proivders

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Contacts and Useful Links

Contact the CRO administrators with any questions:

Email - cro@csu.edu.au.

Links to related websites and documents follow:

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This information page was developed with the assistance of QUT ePrints.

Return to the main Frequently Asked Questions page.