Open Access

ARC & NHMRC open access policies

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) both have open access policies.

How to make a publication open access

There are multiple pathways to making your research open access. Some of these include publishing in a Diamond (Community-Controlled) open access journal, using Green (Repository) open access to make a version of your article available in our repository, or publishing in a Gold (Publisher) open access journal.

When something cannot be made open access within 12 months, this must be declared in the ARC Final Report or the NHMRC Research Grants Management System (RGMS). It may be that the journal or book publisher does not permit Green OA deposit or requires an embargo of longer than 12 months. 

Posting to Academia.edu, ResearchGate and other networking sites does not qualify as OA for ARC & NHMRC policy purposes. Nor does depositing the submitted manuscript (pre-print), which has not been refereed.

DRO record requirements (including Project/Grant ID and ORCID iD)

All research outputs must have a public record in DRO within 3 months of publication. You need to log into Elements to complete the deposit before this deadline.

Elements is an administrative tool only available to staff within Deakin. Records created in Elements feed into both DRO and Staff Profiles, which are separate systems.

Using Elements to have a DRO record created.

1. Link your ORCID iD to Elements (required for NHMRC grant holders)

   The submitting author should have their ORCID iD displayed in the DRO record. You can register for an ORCID iD and link it to your Elements account as a one-time activity. Your ORCID iD will then be displayed in all of your past and future DRO records.

2. Claim or create a publication record

   Elements will automatically find most journal articles, books and book chapters and prompt you to claim them. If you have linked an ORCID iD, some publications will be claimed automatically.

   If you are not prompted to claim your publication, you will need to manually create a record.

3. Deposit your publication

   Once the record exists in Elements, you must complete the deposit process. A list of publications awaiting deposit is displayed in Elements.

   For Gold OA publications, it is enough to link to the OA version.

   For all other publications, upload the published version and the accepted manuscript. (See "Versions of a traditional research output" for details.)

    
   

   Tip

   Uploading files to Elements it is not copyright infringement. Files will only be made public in DRO if copyright and licensing permits. (See "Research and Publishing" for details.)

4. Add labels, including your Project/Grant ID

   Open the record in Elements and click "Add labels" in the Labels box (top right).

   Review the automatically assigned "Fields of Research" label. If you wish to specify a different FoR code, you can do this in the "Author Input Required - 6 Digit FoR Codes" label.

   In the "Author Input Required - Grant ID" label, add your Project ID or Grant ID, including the "ARC" or "NHMRC" prefix.

   

That's it! DRO staff will activate the public record in DRO

Once the record has been claimed or created in Elements and copies have been deposited, the DRO team handles the rest. Staff will check whether an attached or linked version of the publication can be made OA, then publish the record.