Open scholarship

Open Access (OA) means the free, immediate, online availability of research outputs and educational resources. OA content is accessible to everyone, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.

The term “open access” is often used to describe free-to-read works that are © “all rights reserved”. However, full OA allows users to reuse, retain, redistribute, revise and adapt works. Some rights, such as the right of attribution, may be reserved. Full OA is managed with open licences.

Watch Publishing your research: Open access (Panopto (51 mins 26 secs)

An open licence is a copyright licence that grants permission for full open access with “some rights reserved”. Creative Commons licences are used for a broad range of works. Several alternative open licences are available for art, software and data.

Open research, also referred to as open science, is about openly sharing at all stages of the research cycle.

It encompasses open peer review, open access publishing and open data. Most research funders and universities’ policies encourage or mandate open access to research outputs.

Open peer review is an adaptation of the traditional scholarly peer review process, that encourages transparency and collaboration. Models of open peer review include: publication of peer review content; open commenting from the research community; sharing of author and reviewer identities; open discussion between authors, editors and reviewers.

Open access publishing means making scholarly journal articles and books free for everyone to access and potentially reuse. There are various funding models for publishing.

• Self-archiving or Green Open Access: Readers pay a subscription fee for access to the article on the publisher website. Publishers allow authors to deposit a copy of their peer reviewed manuscript in a research repository such as CRO. Embargo periods often apply.
• Publisher, Journal based or Gold Open Access: Authors pay an article processing charge (APC) for their articles to be published open access on the publisher website without an embargo period. This model always has a fee attached and advantages well funded authors and institutions.
• Professional societies or research organisations fund the publishing costs. Open access is free for authors and readers. This model is often referred to as Diamond Open Access.
• Libraries negotiate read & publish agreements with publishers. The subscription cost includes access for readers AND prepayment of APC’s. It is an extension of the Gold Open Access model where institutions pay rather than authors.
• Subscription model where the reader pays for access. This is the traditional model from the print era. It is NOT open access because the information is locked behind a paywall.

The Open access publishing libguide has more information about publishing models, finding OA journals and read & publish agreements at Charles Sturt.

Open Data is the practice of making data freely available to inspect and reuse without restrictions. Open data enables validation of research outputs and further use of research data. The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health & Medical Research Council NHMRC encourage open access to data with appropriate data management and licencing.

Open data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable or FAIR. Charles Sturt’s Research Data Management Policy requires research outputs to conform to the FAIR data principles as far as possible. You can find out more about the FAIR principles in the Research Data Management libguide.

Open Education encompasses resources, tools, and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide. Open Educational Resources (OER) are a core component of this movement, enabling educators and students to freely use, adapt, and share materials.

Open  Educational Resources at Charles Sturt University (Panopto 10:29 min)

Read more about UNESCO’s recommendations for adopting Open Education Resources.

For information about open education resources at Charles Sturt, start with the OER libguide.

See OER in Practice in RMIT’s OER Capability Toolkit

Charles Sturt’s Research Policy mandates that research outputs deposited in Charles Sturt University Research Outputs (CRO) are open access unless there is a significant reason for keeping the work closed.

Charles Sturt authors are encouraged and supported to publish with open access licences through open access publishing agreements that cover article processing charges (APC’s).

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) monitors the percentage of open access research outputs from 225 countries and over 50,000 institutions.