Grant funding and open access

Many research funders, including the NHMRC and ARC, have open access requirements that grant recipients must meet.

The following table summarises key points around compliance with the ARC Open Access Policy, the NHMRC’s updated Open Access Policy, and the University’s Open Access Policy. It is the responsibility of authors to read their funder’s policy in full to ensure that they are compliant.

  Routes to OA CC-BY licence? Rights retention Timing of OA availability
ARC Policy Green or Gold Recommended Recommends that authors retain their rights to make available as Open Access Output must be made Open Access within 12 months of publication (the metadata must be made openly available within 3 months)
NHMRC Policy for grants both awarded before 20 September 2022 and with research outputs published before 1 January 2024 Green or Gold Recommended Recommends rights retention of Author Accepted Manuscript Output must be made Open Access within 12 months of publication (the metadata must be made openly available within 3 months)
NHMRC Policy for grants awarded from 20 September 2022 and all grants still ongoing on 1 January 2024 Green or Gold Required Requires rights retention of Author Accepted Manuscript or Version of Record, and CC-BY licence must be used Immediately upon publication (without embargo)
University Open Access Policy A preference for Green, but acceptance of Gold Recommended Authors should made "reasonable attempts" to retain rights to self-archive and make available Open Access Should be deposited immediately upon publication, but embargo is permitted - authors are encouraged to avoid embargoes of more than 12 months
  • How the library can help

    The library manages the University’s institutional repository, Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S). We can help you meet your NHMRC and ARC grant requirements by making both your metadata and outputs openly accessible in AR&S.

    To achieve this please ensure that your submission records in Aurora include details of your grant funding, including your grant number. The library will then make the metadata of these publications available in AR&S within the required timeframe. If you also want to make the full text available in AR&S then you will need to upload the Authors Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to the submission record in Aurora. The AAM is the version which is most likely allowed to be made available by the publisher but the library will check this before making it openly accessible in AR&S.