Q. What are the Open Access (OA) types?

The different types of open access are:

• Journal-based or 'Gold' Open Access:

Refers to publishing in a fully Open Access (OA) journal where the journal publisher provides free and immediate online access to the full content of the journal, and the final published versions of the articles in that journal are fully open access.

• 'Hybrid' Open Access:

Refers to when an article processing charge is paid for an individual journal article to be made open access in an otherwise subscription journal. This type of open access has an APC associated with it, which is payable by the author/s (Western Sydney University's eligibility guidelines for OA funding does not allow for publishing in 'hybrid' journals).

• Repository-based 'Green' Open Access:

Refers to publishing 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 Western Sydney University's Research Profiles and Repository.

• 'Diamond' Open Access:

Refers to Open Access journals that are free for readers to access and for authors to publish.

• 'Bronze' Open Access:

Refers to a freely available journal article with no open licence (which cannot be considered fully Open Access).

• 'Black" Open Access:

Refers to illegal open access.

For further information, refer to Open Access Australasia.