Benefits of open access publishing

Open access refers to free, unrestricted online access to scholarly materials and provides numerous benefits to individual authors, as well as the University. 

For authors 

  • Delivers a worldwide audience larger than any subscription-based journal, regardless of its prestige or popularity. 
  • Demonstrably increases the visibility of your research. Publishing in the University's repository also sends data to Google Scholar, Trove and other discovery services. 
  • Significantly increases the impact of an authors' work, thereby creating potential for a higher number of citations. The impact of your research can be seen through the University repository's statistics as well as citation tools including the Altmetric donut. 
  • Helps researchers satisfy the requirements of funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). 
  • Enables researchers to manage and promote their publications. 
  • Provides a persistent web address for each article that can be used for ongoing citation purposes. 
  • Ensures the ongoing preservation of a digital copy of your thesis and other non-traditional research outputs (NTROs). 

For the University

  • Helps meet the objectives of The Australian National University's Open Access Policy and Procedure which states: "The Australian National University is a research-intensive, research-led university. Our commitment to the dissemination of research findings is essential both to differentiate the University's research excellence and support national and international research excellence." 
  • Creates a permanent record of university research performance. 
  • Tracks the accessing and downloading of the University's research and provides an impact indicator. 
  • Promotes visibility of the University's research. Publications deposited in Open Research are visible and accessible through a global network of services such as OAIster, The National Library of Australia's Trove service, Google and and Google Scholar. 

A reliable and proven publishing process 

Open access journals and publishers use the same rigorous peer review procedures and standards as subscription-based journal publishing. Publishing your work open access also means that more people will have faster access to your research. In their article Addressing faculty publishing concerns with open access journal quality indicators (2014) Beaubien & Eckard identify positive and negative indicators that assist researchers to evaluate journals prior to article submission. These indicators are pertinent to both open access and subscription-based journal publishing and include checking for: 

  • primary audience 
  • reputation of the editorial board 
  • society/institution affiliations 
  • publishing fees and charges clearly articulated. 

In addition to the indicators identified by Beaubien & Eckard, the ANU University Librarian provides some practical advice to researchers on preventing exploitation by predatory or vanity publishers. 

If you are ever unsure about the validity of an open access publisher or publication or have questions about copyright considerations, contact the ANU Library or ANU Research Services. The Australasian Open Access Support Group (AOASG) is also an authoritative source on current developments in open access publishing and has addressed some concerns authors may have about Open Access publishing. 

Useful articles 

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