• Section 1 - Introduction
• Section 2 - Audience
• Section 3 - Guidelines
• Research and Scholarly Outputs
• Copyright, Compliance and Access
• Further Information and Support
• Section 4 - Roles and Responsibilities

Section 1 - Introduction

(1) An open access approach to the dissemination of research and scholarly outputs facilitates the free exchange of information and worldwide communication of the University of Newcastle's (University) research and scholarship.

(2) Major national and international competitive research funding agencies have adopted mandatory open-access policies based on the expectation that publicly funded research outcomes will be made publicly available. Open access is immediate, permanent, free online access to scholarly research outputs.

(3) The Open Access Guideline (the Guideline) supports and promotes the dissemination of research findings in an international open-access environment through the lodgement of the information describing a research output, e.g. author, title, keywords, date (metadata) and/or post-print publications into the University's institutional repository.

(4) The guideline supports the expectation, articulated in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research and the National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) Open Access Policy, that results of publicly funded research activities should be made widely available. This Guideline is supported by the University's Research Authorship Procedure and Research Publication Responsibility Guideline and should be read in conjunction with those documents.

Section 2 - Audience

(5) University Researchers.

Section 3 - Guidelines

Research and Scholarly Outputs

(6) Material which represents the total publicly available research and scholarly output of the University is to be deposited in the University's digital institutional repository (NOVA) by the author.

(7) The following materials are required to be included:

1. refereed research articles and contributions at the post-peer review stage (known as the Post-print, the 'accepted version' or the 'accepted manuscript');
2. un-refereed research literature, conference contributions, chapters in proceedings, etc (known as the Post-Print, the 'accepted version' or the 'accepted manuscript'); and
3. Higher Degree by Research theses.

(8) Access to these contributions will be subject to any necessary agreement with the copyright owner.

(9) Material to be commercialised, which contains confidential material, or of which the promulgation would infringe a legal commitment by the University and/or the author should not be included in the repository.

(10) If the requirements of a funding agency have been met by publishing the research findings in a peer-reviewed open access journal, only the metadata describing the publication will be included in the repository.

Copyright, Compliance and Access

(11) The deposit of material into the repository does not transfer copyright to the University. Inclusion, use and access of full-text material in the repository is subject to copyright law and agreement with the copyright owner.

(12) The following conditions for full-text access apply:-

1. the author owns the copyright and provides authorisation; or
2. permission has been obtained from the copyright owner; or
3. the publisher, as copyright owner, allows it to be held in an institutional repository.

(13) Where the deposit of the full material is not possible due to copyright restrictions, a citation, abstract and descriptive information including a link to an alternative location such as to the publisher's version of the material may be added to NOVA.

(14) As far as practicable journal publication agreements should not prevent compliance with this Guideline by prohibiting publication in an Open-Access repository. If necessary a suitable publication agreement addendum, which allows compliance, should be attached to the agreement before signing.

Further Information and Support

(15) Information concerning the deposit of material in the institutional repository is available from the NOVA web site.

(16) Library Services staff can also assist with copyright issues and preparation of publication addenda.

Section 4 - Roles and Responsibilities

(17) Researchers will disseminate research findings through the lodgement of metadata describing research finding and/or post-print publications into the University's institutional repository in accordance with this Guideline.