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Researcher Skills Toolkit

Open access publishing

Open access provides a way to promote broader access to research outputs via immediate and free of charge online access to all content within each issue of a journal. Any user can download, copy, distribute, print, search for and link to the full text of content.

Publishing open access provides benefits for authors, institutions, and the community:

  • Unlocks opportunities for collaboration
  • Increases citation rates - research has shown that open access publications are viewed and cited more often than articles behind a paywall
  • Increases your visibility and the impact of your work
  • Ensures compliance with grant and funding rules.
  • Increases exposure of research activity
  • Shares knowledge and innovation
  • Increases community and industry engagement with research.
  • Research is available to those who cannot access paywalled content, including researchers at other institutions and the community
  • Ensures taxpayers get value for (research) money and can access findings.

 

In this video University of Newcastle researchers explain why open access is important for their research.

The University of Newcastle's Open Access Policy states, "An open access approach promotes timely global sharing of knowledge, research, and scholarship and supports the strategic focus of the University ... in engaging with our communities, our regions, and the world." [Section 1(1)]

The Policy supports the principles included in the Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) policies.

 

Support for open access publishing

The University Library has signed a number of Read and Publish Agreements to enable researchers at the University to publish open access without paying an article processing charge (APC). These agreements cover a select number of publishers and journals - in 2025, over 9,900 journals from 15 publishers.

For more details on the Read and Publish agreements, including the full list of eligible titles and author eligibility criteria, please see the Read and Publish Agreements guide. 

Note: some agreements are subject to annual caps. Please check the publisher conditions carefully on the Read and Publish Agreements guide, and if you are publishing in the second half of the year, contact your Research Liaison Librarian for assistance. 

The APC Fund supports the payment of open access publishing in high quality journals not covered by the Read and Publish Agreements. The Fund is intended for the payment of article processing charges by authors who do not have access to other funds which may be used to cover the cost of open access publishing.

The APC Fund has strict author, journal, and article eligibility criteria. Please check the criteria in the APC Fund guide before applying, and contact your Research Liaison Librarian for assistance. Final decisions on APC Fund applications are made by the Colleges.

Note: The APC Fund is a fixed and limited amount of money, and once depleted, applications will cease for the calendar year.

Open Research Newcastle is the University's institutional open access repository, endeavouring to make our research content accessible, searchable and discoverable by the global research community via the major search engines.

Open Research Newcastle will house traditional and non-traditional research outputs, including:

  • Journal articles
  • Chapters
  • Creative works (NTROs)
  • Conference papers
  • Reports
  • Theses 
  • Research datasets

Open Research Newcastle uses green open access principles to make your author accepted manuscripts available in the repository, managing any publisher embargo requirements. Where the copyright owner and journal policy allows, the library will make the published version of your work available in the repository. Check which version of your research output you can include in Open Research Newcastle using the Jisc Open Policy Finder online database of journal open access policies.

For questions about depositing your work, contact the Scholarly Publishing team at the Library, or your Research Liaison Librarian. 

More information Further information about options for open access publishing is available on the journal articles, books and book chapters, non-traditional research outputs, preprints and research data pages of this Module.
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