Open scholarship is the practice of applying principles of openness throughout the research and teaching environment. It encompasses both open research and open education.
This site is a hub to support University of Melbourne students and staff in exploring open scholarship. It unpacks some of the ways in which open practices can be built into teaching and research.
Open Access
Open access is the term applied to research outputs such as journal articles, monographs, and book chapters, that have been made open to everyone. Follow the links below to learn more about open access at the University of Melbourne.
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What is Open Access?
Learn about open access and its benefits. Explore different pathways to opening up research publications, including through publishers and repositories.
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The Principles
The Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne commit the University and its researchers to disseminating research as widely as possible.
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Funder Open Access Policies
Learn about the open access requirements of different research funders. Understand the ARC and NHMRC open access policies and pathways to compliance.
Featured content
Explore publisher and repository pathways to open access:
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Open Access Publishing
Find out more about the University's preferred pathways to open access publishing. Explore our open access publishing agreements and other supported open access initiatives.
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Repository Open Access
Discover the University’s open access institutional repositories, Minerva Access and Melbourne Figshare. Learn how to deposit your research.
Open Research
Open research is not all-or-nothing. You can start with small changes and focus on opening up specific stages of your research. At the beginning of a project, you could preregister your study or trial. Later, you could openly share your research data or code. There is no set pathway to achieving open research. Instead, it is about adopting the open practices that make sense for you, your research, and your research communities. Follow the links below to learn more about different ways to open up your research.
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What is Open Research?
Learn about open research and its benefits. Explore how open practices can be adopted across the research lifecycle.
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Preregistering Research
Registering a study, trial, or report allows for greater transparency and reproducibility. It also lets others to know you are working on a topic.
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Preprints
A preprint is a 'work in progress' scholarly paper that has been made available online before peer review.
Featured content
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Open Data
Understand how to make your data openly accessible. Considerations for open data should happen early on, especially for sensitive datasets.
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Open-Source Code and Software
Sharing your software and code can make your research more open, transparent, and reproducible.
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Open Access Theses
Discover the benefits of making research theses open access and how this works at the University of Melbourne.
Open Educational Resources (OERs)
Open educational resources (OERs) are openly licensed teaching materials. They can be freely used, adapted, remixed, and shared with others. Importantly, OERs can play a major role in improving equity and social justice. OERs are an important aspect of the open scholarship ecosystem. They often draw from open access publications and other open research outputs. Follow the links below to learn more about OERs.
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What are OERs?
Learn about what constitutes an OER and the importance of Creative Commons licences. Also explore the benefits of OERs and some key examples.
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Find and Evaluate OERs
Discover how to find open textbooks and other OERs. Learn how to evaluate them and understand their licence conditions.
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Adopt, Adapt, or Share OERs
Explore the different ways that OERs can be used in teaching. Understand the IP and licensing questions to ask when adapting or sharing OERs.
Further Resources
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Digital Stewardship
The Digital Stewardship (Research) team aims to modernise scholarly practice via digital techniques and by maximising the value of research data.
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Copyright Office
Resources and guidance on copyright considerations affecting your research and publication.
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Minerva Access
Minerva Access is the University's institutional repository. It aims to collect, preserve, and showcase the research output of our staff and students for a global audience.
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Melbourne Figshare
The University's data repository, Melbourne Figshare, is a safe, secure and easy-to-use cloud-based repository. You can use it to share your research data, reports, NTRO's, and other digital assets.
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Researcher@Library
The Library offers high-quality resources and services to support University researchers across the research lifecycle.
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Teaching@Library
Partnering for quality learning and teaching.
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My Thesis in the Library
Find out about the open access, embargo, and restricted access options for your PhD or masters thesis.
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Research outputs
Our Research Outputs team supports tools and information to help you manage your research outputs.
Page last updated 28 February 2025.
Banner image copyright Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash.
Unless otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) / Accepted version
The version of an article, paper, book, or book chapter that has been accepted for publication. It is the author’s final manuscript version after peer review and revisions, but prior to the publisher’s copyediting, typesetting, and formatting results in a proof.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Article Processing Charge (APC)
Fees levied by a journal for publishing an article open access. They are sometimes charged by open access journals and may be their only source of income. Hybrid journals always charge APCs for an article to be available open access, this is an additional income source to subscriptions.
APCs may be paid by an author, their institution, or a funding body. These charges may be waived if an institutional open access publishing agreement is active.
Book Processing Charge (BPC) / Chapter Processing Charge (CPC)
Fees levied by a book publisher for publishing a book or individual book chapter open access. Most major academic book publishers will publish open access for a BPC or CPC. Some open access book publishers do not levy BPCs or CPCs, instead being supported by institutions, organisations, or grants. BPCs, and CPCs may be paid by an author, their institution, or a funding body.
Creative Commons licences
Open licences that have become best practice in open access publishing. They are built using a combination of elements: BY (Attribution), SA (Share-Alike), NC (Non-Commercial), and ND (No Derivatives). All licences are detailed on the Creative Commons website.
The most open of the licences is the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows authors to retain their copyright while granting others permission to distribute, use, adapt, remix, and build upon the material, so long as attribution is given to the creator. This is the preferred, and sometimes required, licence of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), as well as many international research funders.
The most restrictive is the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence does not allow for any commercial uses or the creation and sharing of any adaptations or derivative versions. It greatly restricts how others can use the work and, when adopted as part of an exclusive licence to publish with a publisher, can result in a significant loss of author rights.
Elements
The University of Melbourne’s internal research outputs management system. The Elements platform is used for the collection and reporting of metadata on the University’s research outputs. Publications details in researchers’ Find an Expert profiles are drawn from their Elements profile.
Depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) in Elements is one pathway to making research outputs open access in Minerva Access, our institutional repository.
Embargo
In the context of scholarly publishing, embargoes are access restrictions placed on research outputs. While embargoed, research outputs are not available to the public.
Most publishers of subscription (paywalled) journal articles, for example, require that the peer-reviewed and revised Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of the article is embargoed at publication, most often for 12 or 24 months, after which it can be made open access in a repository. Staff at our institutional repository, Minerva Access, will determine publisher policies and manage embargo periods before making any version of a research output publicly available.
When required for privacy, sensitivity, or to adhere to agreements with third parties, researchers may also choose to embargo their own outputs. Datasets deposited to Melbourne Figshare, for example, can be embargoed when necessary, resulting in a dataset record but no publicly downloadable files. Graduate researchers may request to embargo their theses, under some circumstances, restricting access for a period of time.
Gold open access
Definitions vary, but “gold” open access typically refers to publishing with fully open access journals or publishers. The research output is made freely available to the public immediately upon publication, usually under a Creative Commons licence.
Note that some publishers use the term “gold” to refer to paid open access in subscription journals. Today, this is more commonly referred to as “hybrid” open access.
Green open access
“Green” open access is when a paywalled research output is made freely available to the public in a repository. At the University of Melbourne, we tend to refer to this as “repository open access.” We maintain an institutional repository, Minerva Access, to facilitate green open access to research outputs.
Most academic publishers allow the peer-reviewed Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of a journal article, conference paper, or book chapter to be made green open access. That is, they can be made freely available in a repository, usually after an embargo period (typically 6-36 months).
Including a rights retention statement in a submitted manuscript can enable immediate green open access. See our page "What is Rights Retention?" for more information.
General repository
Multi-disciplinary research repositories that can be used to share Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) or preprints. Examples include Zenodo, SSRN, and Figshare. Many, but not all, are non-commercial.
A comprehensive list of reputable repositories can be found in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
Hybrid journals and publishers
A hybrid journal charges a fee (an Article Processing Charge, or APC) to publish a journal article open access in an otherwise subscription journal. The journal is hybrid because it contains both open access and paywalled content. The APCs levied by hybrid journals are, on average, higher than those levied by open access journals.
Similarly, hybrid book publishers levy a Book Processing Charge (BPC) or Chapter Processing Charge (CPC) to make the book or one or more chapters open access, when they would otherwise be paywalled.
Institutional open access publishing agreements
A contract entered into by an institution and a publisher that allows affiliated authors (usually affiliated corresponding authors only) to publish open access without facing Article Processing Charges (APCs), Book Processing Charges (BPCs), or Chapter Processing Charges (CPCs).
The most common kind of institutional open access publishing agreement today is the Read and Publish agreement with hybrid publishers. However, agreements with fully open access publishers can also be negotiated.
The University of Melbourne's current open access publishing agreements are detailed on the Open Access Publishing page.
Institutional repository
Repositories hosted by institutions to collect the research outputs of that institution. They often collect a broad range of digital items including articles, papers, books, book chapters, reports, data, and creative outputs.
The University of Melbourne has two institutional repositories: Minerva Access for research outputs, and Melbourne Figshare for research data, reports, supplementary research materials, and non-traditional research outputs (NTROs). You can find out more about Minerva Access and Melbourne Figshare on our Repository Open Access page .
Metadata
Metadata is information that describes an item or asset – that is, data – such as a research output or research dataset. This metadata may be compiled into a publications management platform such as Elements, or a repository such as Minerva Access.
The metadata of a journal article, for example, will usually include information such as: the author(s) and their affiliations, article title, date of publication, journal title, journal ISSN, publisher, volume, issue, page range, DOI, licence and access rights, and funder grant ID.
Minerva Access
The University of Melbourne’s institutional repository for research publications, including journal articles, book chapters, and theses. Through Minerva Access, University of Melbourne researchers can make their research outputs open access.
University staff can deposit their research outputs in Minerva Access by uploading files in Elements, completing a ServiceNow form, or emailing the Research Outputs team. Find out more on the Research Gateway (internal access only).
Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO)
A broad term encompassing research outputs that do not take the form of typical peer-reviewed scholarly publications (journal articles, books and book chapters, conference publications).
Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) include visual artworks, creative writing, films, performances, recordings, music composition, building and design projects, curated exhibitions, and portfolios. They may also be referred to as Artistic and Practice Based Research Outputs (APROs).
To be considered a research output for reporting purposes, an NTRO must meet the definition of research established in the Australian Research Council's 2018-19 ERA report:
Research is defined as the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies, inventions and understandings. This could include synthesis and analysis of previous research to the extent that it is new and creative.
University of Melbourne researchers can find out more about reporting their NTROs on our Research Gateway: Add Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs) to Find an Expert.
Open access
Open access refers to the availability of research outputs via the internet, such that any user can find, freely access, read, and download the output without charge. Best practice in open access is to use open licences, such as Creative Commons licences, that permit users to copy, distribute, print, search, link, crawl, mine, and otherwise use and reuse the research output, as long as proper attribution is provided. Find out more on our What Is Open Access? page.
Open access journals and publishers
Journals or publishers that release all their content open access. Research outputs are made freely available online such that anyone can find, access, download, read, use, and share the output. Sharing and reuse is facilitated through open licences, such as Creative Commons licences, and always subject to proper attribution.
A comprehensive list of open access journals is available through the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which is quality controlled and clearly displays any Article Processing Charges (APCs) levied by journals. Almost 70% of the journals listed in DOAJ do not levy APCs, instead being supported by institutions, organisations, associations, or grants.
Paywall
A barrier to accessing content online, which can only be overcome by having a subscription (either institutional or individual) or paying a one-off access fee.
Paywalled content is sometimes referred to as closed or closed access, as opposed to open or open access.
Plan S
Plan S is an international initiative to require grant funded research articles to be fully and immediately open access upon publication. There are three compliant pathways:
- Publishing in a fully open access journal or open access platform.
- Immediate repository open access (green open access) under a CC BY licence. The rights retention strategy has been designed to support this pathway.
- Publishing in a journal that is under a transformative agreement, and is therefore moving from hybrid publishing to fully open access publishing.
Plan S was initiated in 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding organisations that includes the World Health Organization, the European Commission, the NHMRC (from 2022), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and various European funding agencies.
Find out more on our Funder open access policies page and on the cOAlition S website.
Preprint
A version of an article or paper that is shared openly prior to formal peer review or publication. Preprints are typically shared on preprint servers, such as arXiv.org, bioRxiv, OSF Preprints, SSRN, or Zenodo.
Find out more on our Preprints page.
Read and Publish (R&P) agreement
Contracts entered into by institutions and publishers wherein institutions pay for both read access to specified subscription journals and for affiliated academics to publish open access in those journals. The publishing component may be uncapped (unlimited) or capped (limited) and may cover only a select titles list from the publisher. In many cases, the agreements only cover select hybrid journals, with APCs still being levied for open access journals. These agreements are sometimes called transformative agreements when they aim to transform the publisher’s underlying business model to make their journals fully open access.
Most of the R&P agreements in place at the University of Melbourne were negotiated by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and have also been adopted by other Australian universities. All of the University’s current R&P agreements are detailed on our Open Access Publishing page.
Repository
An online digital archive, usually open to the public, that stores and provides access to research outputs. Common types of repositories include: institutional repositories, general repositories, and subject repositories.
Research output
A work produced during a research project. Research outputs are diverse in nature and range from journal articles, conference papers, books, and book chapters, to research data, code, software, protocols, and artistic and creative works.
Rights retention
Rights retention involves authors pre-emptively asserting copyright and sharing rights over Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) at the time of initial submission to a publisher, usually through the application of a CC BY licence to the AAM. Upon article publication, the AAM is deposited in a repository for immediate open access.
In alignment with the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy, the 2022 NHMRC Open Access Policy requires authors submitting to subscription journals to include a rights retention statement in their submitted manuscript. Upon article publication, authors are expected to make their AAM open access under a CC BY licence in a repository. This strategy is also strongly encouraged by the University's Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne.
For more information on author rights retention, see our What is rights retention? page. Further guidance on the NHMRC's rights retention requirements can be found on our Funder open access policies page and in the NHMRC’s Open access and retention of ownership rights document.
Subject repository
Discipline-specific research repositories that can be used to share AAMs or preprints.
Examples include PubMed Central, ERIC from the Institute of Education Sciences, Humanities Commons, and RePEc EconPapers for economics research, as well as preprint servers such as arXiv.org, bioRxiv, and medRxiv.
Subject repositories are usually non-commercial and supported by institutions, organisations, or grants. A comprehensive list of reputable subject repositories can be found in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR).
Submitted manuscript
The submitted manuscript is the version of a research output originally submitted to a venue, such as a journal or book publisher. This version typically undergoes editorial review and may subsequently be sent on for peer review.
In the past, submitted manuscripts were sometimes called preprints, although this term now has a different meaning: early versions of article or papers shared prior to peer review on preprint servers.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Subscribe to Open (S2O)
A publishing model wherein a journal or publisher makes the coming year’s content open access at no cost to authors, if their annual subscription target is reached.
Although more common with journals and journal publishers, the model has also been adopted by some book publishers, as in the case of MIT Press’s Direct to Open (D2O) program. Participating institutions receive access to the publisher’s backlist/archives and, if revenue targets are met, the coming year’s monographs and edited volumes are published open access at no cost to authors.
Some of the S2O initiatives currently being supported by the University of Melbourne are described on our Open Access Publishing page
Venue
The venue in which a research output is published is the journal, conference proceedings, book series or imprint, or website that publishes the final work. Venues have different scopes in what they publish – for example, research articles, conference papers, or monographs – and typically have different audiences.
Version of Record (VoR)
The final published version of a research output – usually the publisher’s final PDF.
Unless the work is published open access under a Creative Commons licence, this version cannot generally be shared or made open access in a repository.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Page last updated 11 April 2025.
Unless otherwise noted, and with the exception of the above images and logos, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
Researcher@Library Training
The Researcher@Library program runs throughout the year and features several webinars on open scholarship. Sessions are open to all University of Melbourne staff and students. The open scholarship focused sessions below are offered in 2025:
Open Access in 2025
In this webinar, we explore:
- The different pathways to open access for scholarly publications including journal articles, conference papers, and books and book chapters.
- Trends in open access, both at the University and more broadly.
- Open access publishing pathways that do not result in author-facing fees.
- The University's open access publishing agreements with different journal publishers.
- Repository open access pathways, including through Minerva Access.
Presented by the Scholarly Communications and Liaison Librarian teams.
Understanding Open Research
Watch the latest recording (8 April 2025)
This webinar is for researchers from any discipline interested in open science and open research. The session begins with a brief introduction to the concept of open research and its underlying values. We then invite attendees to vote on aspects of open research to explore in more depth. Topics include:
- Preregistration
- Open notebooks
- Open-source code and software
- Open data
- Open collections
- Citizen science
- Preprints
- Open peer review
- Open NTRO's (Non-Traditional Research Outputs)
- Open public engagement
Presented by the Digital Stewardship and Scholarly Communications teams. Earlier versions ran as Open Research 101 and Exploring Open Science.
Open Access and Your Thesis
Watch the latest recording (27 March 2025)
Designed for Graduate Researchers, this webinar provides an overview of open access and copyright considerations for your thesis. The session examines:
- The University's institutional repository (Minerva Access) and some of the benefits of open access.
- Open access requirements for theses, as well as embargo and restricted access options.
- Considerations for theses with publications, and for publishing thesis material after submission.
- Third-party copyright and permissions.
Presented by the Scholarly Communications team and the Copyright Office.
Note that the Researcher@Library program is offered to University of Melbourne staff and students only. For more information, email libraryresearch-tickets@unimelb.edu.au.
Page last updated 10 April 2025.
Unless otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
Contact a librarian
For enquiries relating to open scholarship, please email your discipline's Liaison Librarians. You can also arrange a time to consult a librarian. Our librarians are the first line of support for open access, open research, and open educational resources (OERs).
Alternatively, visit the contact the library for other ways to get in touch.
Scholarly Communications
scholarly-comms@unimelb.edu.au
The Scholarly Communications team can assist with complex enquiries relating to open access and open scholarship. They can also work with colleagues across Scholarly Services to organise seminars and workshops for researchers.
Digital Stewardship
digital-stewardship@unimelb.edu.au
The Digital Stewardship (Research) team can assist with complex research data management (RDM) enquiries. Reach out for assistance with open data, open-source data and code, open notebooks, or the Melbourne Figshare repository.
Page last updated 10 April 2025.
Unless otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.