Open Access
Open Access makes scholarly outputs freely available via the Internet, with clear licences – such as Creative Commons – that allow for further sharing and reuse.
CSIRO Publishing supports both ‘Green’ and ‘Gold’ Open Access to help authors reach the broadest audience for their work and to facilitate unrestricted access to scholarly research. All Open Access articles undergo the same rigorous peer-review as those published under a subscription model.
All of CSIRO Publishing’s subscription-based journals now offer a hybrid Gold Open Access option, allowing you the choice to publish openly and enjoy all the benefits of open access in a subscription journal.
- Gold Open Access overview
- How to choose Gold Open Access as an author
- Choosing an Open Access licence type
- Retrospective Open Access
- Green Open Access
The peer review and publishing services applied to all articles incur costs. Because these costs cannot be recovered from subscription revenue for Open Access content, we charge Open Access Fees.
There are four types of Gold Open Access available through CSIRO Publishing.
Article Publishing Charge (APC): Authors may choose to have an article published under an Open Access licence by paying an article publishing charge.
Read and Publish agreements: CSIRO Publishing has taken significant steps to accelerate progress towards Open Access with Read and Publish agreements. Authors can publish articles as Open Access in selected journals at no cost to research projects if they are from an eligible participating institution. The corresponding author's eligibility will be picked up by our systems via their email address or Ringgold ID. Find out more about Read and Publish agreements along with the current list of participating institutions.
Society-Sponsored Open Access: Some of our society partners have paid for portions of their journal to be published Open Access. The subscription price for that journal reflects only the portion of content not published Open Access.
Sponsored Issues or articles: In some circumstances, Open Access for all or part of an issue may be sponsored by an external organisation or partner.
Gold Open Access articles:
- may be viewed by anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world without the need for a current subscription
- may be uploaded to any personal, institutional or public repository subject to acknowledgement of the author and journal in accordance with the Creative Commons Licence used
- may be shared, copied or redistributed in any medium or format in accordance with the Creative Commons Licence used.
You are offered the choice of Open Access after your work is accepted for publication. All of our articles enjoy the same:
- rigorous peer-review
- expert editorial advice to improve your work
- professional production services
- loading to CrossRef and appropriate Abstracting and Indexing Services.
Once your manuscript has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be sent an email from our partner The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) with information on how to select your Creative Commons Licence and complete payment. Payments should be made using the CCC’s web-based RightsLink platform, unless you are eligible for free Open Access under a Read and Publish agreement. For more information see our Publishing charges page.
Authors are offered a choice of Creative Commons licences that they can apply to their work. Creative Commons licences allow free access and redistribution of the work, and differ in terms of the rights they grant end users. All of the licences require that those redistributing or re-using the work give appropriate credit and indicate if changes were made. Authors retain the copyright.
Prior to 2020, the majority of CSIRO Publishing Open Access articles were published under the most restrictive re-use licence:
CC BY-NC-ND licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_US). This licence allows others to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following conditions:
Attribution – the original source must be cited (BY)
NonCommercial – works may not be used for commercial purposes (NC)
NoDerivatives – derivates of the article (e.g. translations) may not be distributed (ND)
We now also offer these less restrictive licences for authors to choose:
CC BY-NC licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en_US). This licence allows others to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following conditions:
Attribution – the original source must be cited (BY)
NonCommercial – works may not be used for commercial purposes (NC)
CC BY licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US). This licence allows others to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following conditions:
Attribution – the original source must be cited (BY)
You can choose the licence type you want to apply to your Open Access article through our Author Services module supported by the CCC RightsLink platform.
CSIRO Publishing is working with its stakeholders to establish practical solutions to make open access a beneficial, sustainable and long-term publication model.
Authors who initially chose to publish their paper under a subscription model in a CSIRO Publishing hybrid journal may retrospectively convert their published paper to open access to increase the impact and accessibility of their research. Authors wishing to make their previously published article open access should contact the individual journal office. Authors will be offered a choice of Creative Commons licences and will be charged an article publishing charge. The metadata and full text of the published article will be updated with the open access licence.
Please note that articles published open access retrospectively are not eligible for Read and Publish agreements: Read and Publish agreements have funding for a set period of time and articles accepted outside this time frame are not eligible to be made open access retrospectively.
All journals published by CSIRO Publishing allow authors to deposit the Accepted version of their manuscript into an institutional repository or put it on a personal website, with no embargo.
The Accepted version is the author-created, peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript. The Publisher’s edited or typeset versions cannot be used. The institutional repository should be that of the institution employing the author at the time the work was conducted or PubMed Central. We ask that authors link to the published version on the CSIRO Publishing website, wherever possible.
