Open Access (OA) research literature is free online access to the outputs of publicly funded research.

This includes journal articles, conference papers, theses, reports, and any other outputs. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full-text, or use them for any other lawful purpose.

Open access literature increases the potential readership beyond those with research library affiliations or journal subscriptions.

"Open Access Explained!" by Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

To find out more about the practice of open research, see the library guide Open Research.

There are several models of open access publishing.

	Gold Open Access
	Publish in a fully Open Access journal. This route may involve a charge but ensures immediate and permanent access to the work. The publication cost, known as an APC (Article Processing Charge), is either covered by the author/s or their institution. Some researchers, intent on ensuring OA for their work, include anticipated APC costs in their list of funding requirements in grant applications. A list of fully open access journals can be found on the DOAJ website.
	Hybrid Open Access
	Publish in a 'hybrid' journal.  These journals are subscription journals that allow open access for individual articles on payment of a fee (APC). This fee is payable by the author/s or their institution. Note: Some journal websites will refer to this option as Gold Open Access as the content is immediately available, but true Gold Open Access refers only to a publication in a fully open access journal.
	Green Open Access
	Publish in a subscription-based journal with the full-text deposited into a trusted repository, i.e. a publicly accessible database managed by a research institution (such as RMIT's Research Repository). This route relies on publishers allowing an author to share an earlier version of the work, whilst the publisher maintains ownership of the final published version.

Acknowledgment to Western Sydney University Library

Image: "Benefits of open access" by Danny Kingsley and Sarah Brown is licensed under CC BY 4.0

RMIT publications 2006-2020 per average scholar citations

Data from lens.org (1 February 2021) show that Open Access publications by RMIT researchers consistently average more citations than non-open access publications.