Your contributors will benefit from:

• Increased discoverability of and access to their research results
  • OA publication makes research outputs freely available to anyone with an internet connection. This means that the author's research findings are available to a wider audience and it is easier for other researchers and the general community to find, read and potentially engage with or cite their work.
•  Potential for greater academic impact
  • Evidence is emerging that Open Access publishing can increase citation rates. See the Open Citation project which provides a bibliography listing recent studies demonstrating the relationship between Open Access and increased citation impact.
• Potential for greater impact in society and industry engagement
  • The Australian Government's 2016 National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) introduced new funding arrangements for universities that give equal emphasis to success in industry and other end-user engagement as it does to research quality. Open Access publishing facilitates the dissemination of research results and knowledge of researchers' expertise and research projects within the wider community.
• Compliance with funding mandates
  • Many authors need to meet Open Access requirements set by their funding body. An open access platform will facilitate this. See for example, the NHMRC and ARC policies on Open Access.

For more information go to the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group page: Why Open Access?

Creative Commons licences provide a simple standardised way for authors to share their work with others. Offering works under a Creative Commons licence does not mean authors give up copyright. The licences allow users to reuse, remix and share the content legally, as long as they follow certain conditions. They are widely used and provide an excellent choice for managing the licencing aspect of publishing an OA journal.

 Authors publishing in your journal should sign an open access licence agreement. If no licence is applied Australian copyright law automatically applies. A CC licence makes it clear to users under what circumstances they can share and reuse the content without needing to visit the journal's sharing and reuse policy or contact the journal or author. Visit the Creative Commons website for more information and assistance in selecting the most appropriate licence for your and the authors' needs.

Operating an OA journal takes resources and will incur some cost.

• Volunteer effort plays an important role in most not for profit OA journals' operations. Editorial help is relatively easy to source. It may be more difficult however to get volunteers to perform other technical tasks such as copy editing, web maintenance and typesetting.
• Donations of time, resources and money are another source of support for OA journals. 
• You may be able to generate income through the journal’s operation:
  • Article Processing Fees charged to authors are a common method of funding OA journals. 
  • Request payment for added value products such as PDF format or compilations of material.
  • Sell advertising on the journal’s web site or in the journal itself.
  • Society membership fees.

How will researchers, librarians and the general public discover your journal and its content?

• Journal indexes, directories, metadata harvesters and search engines 
  • Indexing and abstracting services enable the content of your journal to be integrated into the body of literature in its field and ensure articles can be easily located. Once your journal has a track record of timely publication and solid content, contact indexing and abstracting services for consideration. Look for journal indexes that cover your field. Some important indexes include:
    • Web of Science / Clarivate. See their journal selection process.
    • PubMed Central. See how to add a journal to PubMed.
  • The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. See their page on how to get your journal content / article metadata indexed in DOAJ.
  • Ensure your journal is listed in as many relevant indexes and directories as possible.
  • Endeavour to have your articles discoverable in Google and Google Scholar. Google provides policy and technical information for scholarly publishers and societies.
  • The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway provides you with a self-service tool, available at no charge, for harvesting the metadata of your unique, open-access digital content into WorldCat. Once there, your collections are more visible and discoverable to end users who search WorldCat as well as Google and other popular websites.
  • Trove, the Australian National Library gateway to Australian resources also harvests metadata from partner institutions including publishers and is searchable via Google.
• International Standard Serial number (ISSN)
  • Obtain an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), a uniform worldwide means of uniquely identifying a serial publication. It is free and simple. Contact the Australian ISSN Agency.
• Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)
  • ​The DOI system is designed to uniquely identify and facilitate the location of digital material. Consider joining CrossRef, the official Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration agency for scholarly publications. It also supplies a number of useful cross referencing services that will help integrate your journal's material into other literature. Author's should cite the unique DOI given to their article when promoting their article online as the DOI will link to the full text and also enable systems such as PlumX and Altmetric to track mentions in social media, blogs and news items as well as citations, views, downloads and more.
• Professional networking 
  • Announce the journal and new articles as they appear on professional mailing lists.
  • Include a link to your journal or the DOI for selected articles in your email signature.
  • Post on social media. Remember to use article DOIs.

Subscription-based journals can still support the Open Access movement and assist authors by implementing an Open Access policy that is compatible with the requirements of major funding bodies in Australia and internationally. 

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Research Council  (ARC) require that any publication arising from NHMRC or ARC supported research must be made Open Access within twelve months of publication. There is more information about funders’ Open Access mandates here.

For additional reasons why authors may be seeking to publish with journals that allow some form of Open Access see the Why make your journal Open Access box above.

To facilitate a more Open Access friendly journal, you can:

• Make your Open Access policy explicit and available on your website.

• Ensure your policy allows authors to deposit their articles in an Open Access repository within twelve months of publication. It doesn’t have to be the final, published version of the article – frequently journals permit the author’s accepted manuscript (the peer-reviewed version accepted for publication) to be made freely available.

• Consider offering authors an Open Access option for a fee, known as an Article Processing Charge. This is referred to as a hybrid Open Access model. This can be a way of transitioning to Open Access.

Converting to Open Access

There are many pathways for converting a journal to Open Access, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and considerations.

Harvard Library recently published a comprehensive literature review on options and best practices on converting subscription-based scholarly journals to Open Access, including analysis of different scenarios and case studies of journals that have made the transition.

See Solomon, David, J. Mikael Laakso, and Bo-Christer Björk(authors). Peter Suber (editor). 2016. Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: A Review of Approaches and Experiences. 

• Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Australasian journal of medieval and early modern studies.

•  CygnusUWA

Showcases the research of first year students at The University of Western Australia (UWA) enrolled in a biology unit.

• Education research and perspectives

A multi-disciplinary Open Access journal, published continuously by the Faculty of Education since December 1950. All contents from 2000 are now available as OA articles. (Host: Faculty of Education)

• Limina: a journal of historical and cultural studies

A refereed academic journal of historical and cultural studies based in the Discipline of History at UWA. (Host: Faculty of Arts)

• Outskirts: feminisms along the edge

A peer-reviewed feminist cultural studies journal published in May and November. (Host: School of Humanities)

• Tenderfoot (formerly Trove)

An online interactive creative arts journal created for, by and with students. (Host: UWA Cultural Precinct)

• Westerly ​(issues become Open Access after three years)

Since 1956, Westerly has been publishing lively fiction and poetry as well as intelligent articles. It covers literature and culture throughout the world, but maintains a special emphasis on Australia, particularly Western Australia, and the Asian region.