Open Access Subject Guide: Mandates

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) policies now require funded research to be made publicly available.

This follows similar requirements by international funding bodies e.g. the National Institutes of Health (US) and the Wellcome Trust in the UK.

What does this mean?

Publications arising from funded research must be deposited in an open access institutional repository within twelve months from the date of publication.

What are the requirements?

The Chief Investigator outlined in the grant is responsible for compliance. When an article is accepted for publication, this person will need to ensure the following appears in CDU eSpace, CDU's institutional repository:

• Publication's metadata i.e. journal name, title, author(s), volume, issue, pagination
• An appropriate version of the publication, when available.

Which version is required?

The ARC and NHMRC require you to deposit either one of the following versions of your document:

• Final accepted manuscript following peer review including changes (usually a Word document)
• Published Version-of-record including publisher’s formatting, logo etc.

However, the publisher's policy on open access will determine which version should be deposited.

What about copyright?

There may be legal or contractual reasons that limit complying with the mandate. The NHMRC and ARC are aware that initial compliance may be affected by pre-existing publishing agreements and the policies provide advice in this case.

CDU Library will check that records in eSpace comply with publishers’ requirements for providing open access to either published or manuscript document versions.

Courtesy of Curtin University Library