Publishing your work open access

Consider the following steps at each stage of publication to comply with the open access (OA) policies set by your funding bodies. For further information, refer to:

Step 1

Choose a journal that has:

  • the highest quality outlet suitable for your publication
  • the right audience for your content
  • the right support for your OA licence.

The Think section of Publish and share has information on the process to follow when choosing a journal.

Step 2

When submitting your publication to the journal, remember to:

  1. Use your ORCID iD along with your name on your publication
    • Grant Crossref rights to push your publications to your ORCID profile so that UQ eSpace can harvest and make available your publication details.
  2. List UQ as your affiliation as per UQ's Authorship Procedure
    • Include required funder acknowledgements (e.g. the ARC requires that published research outputs must include acknowledgement of ARC funding and the ARC Project ID).

The Submit section of Publish and Share provides an example of the correct affiliation format to use and other authorship best practice advice.

Step 3

  1. Check if you need to pay article processing charges (APCs).
  2. Use the Journal Search (UQ login required) tool in UQ eSpace to check your journal title’s OA status.

Fully open access journal

If a journal is not part of any read and publish agreements, you will need to pay an APC and source your own funds for it. Be prepared to exercise a rights retention strategy or select a different journal of suitable quality.

Contact the Librarian Team for advice.

Not a fully open access journal

Some journals offer the option to publish your article open access by paying an APC or you can submit at no cost and publish behind a paywall, requiring a subscription or payment for access.

UQ has several Read and Publish Agreements with publishers and journals where you may have access to a pre-paid or discounted APC if you are the corresponding author.

If the journal you are publishing in is not covered by one of UQ's Read and Publish Agreements, you can still meet open access mandates (if your research is funded by the ARC or NHMRC) and not pay an APC by depositing the author accepted manuscript (post peer review version) of your article in UQ eSpace.

Note

  • If your paper acknowledges funding from agencies other than the ARC and NHMRC, such as Horizon 20/20 or the Wellcome Trust, they may have more restrictive OA compliance requirements.
  • Both the ARC and NHMRC policies require a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. Learn more about CC licences.
  • There are special requirements for research resulting in a patent - refer to 4.3 of the NHMRC Open Access policy.

Step 4

Comply with OA mandates once your paper is published.

  1. Ensure the publication metadata is in UQ eSpace and is included in your profile.
  1. If your paper was not published in a fully OA journal, deposit the author accepted manuscript in UQ eSpace. This is the version post peer-review but without the journal or publisher layout.
  • UQ eSpace will make this version open access when possible, taking into account embargo periods.
  • If your article is not able to be open within a 12 month embargo period, you can still satisfy the ARC policy. (Check other Funders’ requirements to ensure OA compliance.) You may need to supply a statement clearly articulating that the journal was the most suitable quality outlet for your publication.
  • Use a rights retention strategy to communicate your intentions clearly to the publisher when submitting your manuscript and upload your author accepted manuscript to UQ eSpace as soon as the paper is published to satisfy some funder mandates, e.g. NHMRC.
  • Your article will be set to automatically change to openly available at the end of the embargo period.

Policies and mandates has more information about open access compliance for different funding bodies.

Other options to consider in your workflow

Share your data

Both ARC and NHMRC policies refer to and support the FAIR principles. That is, research data should be:

  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Interoperable
  • Re-usable.

Consult funder and journal or publisher policies around data sharing.

Submit the research data (UQ login required) underlying your publication to UQ eSpace in order to:

  • share it (either openly, or via a mediated approach)
  • make it available for peer reviewers).

Cite your dataset in your publication

Cite your dataset to preserve the link between your article and dataset. If you choose to publish your research data in UQ eSpace, a DOI will be minted for your dataset.

Promote your publications

Learn how to promote your work and academic profile.