Types of open access

What is Open Access?

Open Access (OA) refers to scholarly publications that are published in such a way that they are free to read at no cost to the reader. Publications have often been locked behind paywalls and only available via expensive subscriptions and one-off purchases. OA removes these barriers making research more accessible, fostering public trust in scholarly research, and broadening access to valuable information.

When it comes to publishing your research OA, you can choose from:

  • Green open access
  • Gold open access
  • Hybrid model of Gold open access.

Green open access

For Green OA, you self-archive an author-accepted version of your research.

  1. Publish in the journal of your choice 
  2. Archive or link to an author accepted (post-print) version of the manuscript in your institution's repository (UQ eSpace), or in a national repository (e.g. PubMed Central). 
  3. Exercise your Rights Retention Strategy (RSS) to achieve immediate OA by depositing a copy of the author accepted manuscript in UQ eSpace.

Clearly communicate your intent to publish as Green OA to the publisher before or at submission of your manuscript.

NHMRC recommends including the following statement at submission, to ensure licensing arrangements are set up before a publishing agreement is in place: 

This research was funded in whole or part by the National Health and Medical Research Council [Grant number]. For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. (NRMRC Open Access Policy 2022, p. 12) 

Many publishers permit the archiving of a post-peer review author's version of the article in an institutional repository. An embargo period may apply. In UQ eSpace, the deposited manuscript can be set to automatically become openly available at the end of the embargo period.

Make research open access in UQ eSpace has more information about article versions and embargoes.

Benefits of Green OA 

Gold open access 

For Gold OA, you pay for the article to be fully and immediately open in a fully open access journal.

  1. Publish in a fully open access journal  
  2. Pay an article processing charge (APC) to the publisher who makes the article immediately open, findable and accessible. 
  3. Deposit the article details (including the DOI link to the published article) in UQ eSpace.  

Hybrid model of Gold open access 

For the hybrid model of OA, an APC is paid to make an individual article immediately open access in a subscription-based journal. The article will be made available via the journal's website but other articles in the journal may NOT be available via open access. 

This model gives the publisher the opportunity to "double dip" into the [limited] pool of research funds by charging: 

  1. The Library a subscription for the journal, on behalf of the UQ community, to access other articles in the journal that are not open access and, 
  2. The author an APC for a particular article in the journal.  

Before you commit to paying an APC, be aware of why the journal is charging for you to publish your research article. There may be no requirement at all for you to pay an APC. Find out more about Article processing charges (APC).