Have you ever noticed labels such as ‘open access’ and ‘free access’ when reading a journal article online and wondered what the difference was? There is, in fact, a subtle but powerful difference.
While in both cases the research is free to read, only open access research is free to reuse. Open access research has an open copyright licence that permits others to share or build upon the work without permission, in line with specified conditions. The most widely used are Creative Commons licences, which clearly communicate how research may be reused.
Publishers may make some articles ‘free access’ where the research is free to read online but is not openly licensed and reuse is restricted. This limits the ability for the research to be openly shared, used and built upon. ‘Free access’ may also be revoked at any time, while research made open access under a Creative Commons licence will always be open access as the licences are irrevocable.
It’s important to know this key difference when publishing your work, as some publishers may use this terminology interchangeably. If you’re unsure whether your work will be published open access, you can check your copyright transfer agreement, publisher author guidelines or contact the Library.
If you have already published research that the publisher has made ‘free access’, but not open access, you may be able to make a full text version of the research available on our institutional repository, Griffith Research Online (GRO). GRO provides a stable platform for permanent access to research in compliance with publisher copyright policies. And, depending on the publisher, the accepted manuscript version could be made open access under a Creative Commons licence.
Learn more about how to deposit your research to GRO.
