Celebrating Open Access Week 2021
Open Access Week begins today, and this year’s theme is ‘It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity‘.
This topic prompts us to consider the ways in which we can all help build an open knowledge ecosystem, where everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute to and access high quality open research.
Australia’s Chief Scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, has identified Open Access (OA) as a key strategy for breaking down barriers and reaching people around the world, including those not supported by well-resourced institutions. It is highlighted as one of the four key pillars of her strategic work plan.
Open access publishing also creates opportunities to promote diverse voices, including the work of Indigenous researchers, LGBTQI+ authors and others who have often found themselves excluded from traditional publishing models.
Open Access Week events
Open Access Australasia has organised a program of thought-provoking panels and presentations with a variety of expert speakers. Topics include:
- The Open Knowledge ecosystem
- Research assessment
- OA across disciplines
- Global challenges and open science
- Research involving Indigenous People and Knowledge
- Open educational resources (OERs)
- Academic communication and outreach
You can find out more and register for the sessions on the Open Access Australasia website.
Open up your research with Green Open Access in Deakin Research Online (DRO)
Even if your research is published in a traditional subscription access journal, often you can make a copy openly available in an institutional repository, such as Deakin Research Online (DRO). This is called Green Open Access or the author self-archiving model.
There are many advantages to Green OA in DRO:
- No cost: there are no fees or charges associated with making your research Green OA through DRO.
- Greater exposure: by providing free access to your research, you make your work more accessible and allow it to have greater exposure and impact.
- Increased citations: research released as Green OA benefits the most from the ‘Open Access Citation Advantage’. Piwowar et al., (2018) note Green OA articles are cited 33% more than average.
- More discoverable: publications in DRO are discoverable via Google, Trove, and other search engines.
- Trouble-free: DRO staff ensure compliance with copyright, embargo periods, and other publisher policies.
- Grant compliance: many funding bodies, including ARC and NHMRC, stipulate that research outputs facilitated by their grants be made openly accessible. Green OA allows you to fulfil these requirements.
To find out more about making your own research openly accessible, visit Deakin’s Open Access Resource Guide.
You can also explore the vast trove of open access research created at Deakin through Deakin Research Online (DRO). More than 25% of the records in DRO are now open access, meaning 30,000+ publications are freely available to anyone in the world.
Get in touch
If you have any queries about open access publishing, finding open access resources or making your research openly accessible, Deakin Library staff are more than happy to assist you. To direct your query:
- Research Librarians can provide publishing guidance
- DRO Support can assist with making your research open access and navigating publisher policies
- The Copyright Office can advise on matters of copyright and publishing agreements