Policies and mandates

The Open Access for UQ Research Publications Policy sets out the requirements for UQ researchers to make research publications open access (OA) via UQ’s institutional repository, UQ eSpace, as soon as possible following acceptance of the publication and complying with  restrictions imposed by funding bodies and publisher. 

Explore the Open Access for Research Publications Guideline to find information on best practices for making research publications OA and more resources and support.

Complying with funding mandates

Both the Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have open access policies.  

ARC

The ARC Open Access Policy requires:  

  • open access to the post peer review version (Author accepted manuscript/post-print or a publisher's version) within 12 months of publication 
  • the publication details to be available in UQ eSpace within 3 months of publication 
  • research outputs to acknowledge funders and to include the funder grant ID. 

If your publications do not comply with the requirements you will need to provide an explanation in your final report (6.1 of the ARC Open Access Policy). 

NHMRC 

The NHMRC Open Access Policy requires immediate open access from:  

  • 20 Sep 2022 for all publications relating to new NHMRC grant funding 
  • 1 Jan 2024 for all publications relating to all NHMRC grant funding.  

Researchers can comply with these mandates by:  

  • publishing in a fully Open Access journal and paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) or using a Library pre-paid APC via one of our Read and Publish agreements  
  • depositing the Author Accepted Manuscript under a CC-BY licence in UQ eSpace at the same time as publishing in a journal that is not open access. This approach will require a Rights Retention Strategy. 

Making a preprint openly available does not meet the OA policy requirements for ARC and NHMRC. Preprints are versions of papers prior to peer review.

It is not advised to use social networking sites (e.g. ResearchGate) as a means of achieving open access. 

Other funding agencies 

If you have funding from another funding agency, check your funding agreement. Other funders (e.g. Wellcome Trust or Horizon 2020) have more onerous OA compliance requirements. 

Use our Journal Search tool to make informed publishing decisions, including locating reputable open access journals to submit your manuscripts to and identify the journals included into Read and Publish agreements for a discount or full APC coverage.

Policies and procedures

UQ policies

Other related policies