12th April 2021

The first article from QUT researchers published under a new agreement with CSIRO Publishing is at the vanguard of an initiative that will see even more QUT research made Open Access in journals that were previously subscription-based.

  • CSIRO Publishing Read and Publish agreement removes article publishing charges for authors
  • Research articles previously by subscription now open to all
  • Creative Commons licence applied to published articles
  • First QUT article published under agreement looks at circular economy for livestock industry

The CSIRO Publishing Read and Publish agreement is a new type of comprehensive publisher agreement that will increase Open Access options for researchers, QUT Library’s manager, Scholarly Communications Services Stephanie Bradbury said.

“Unlike the traditional journal/publisher subscription model, these new agreements bundle the fees for both reading content with the fees for open access publishing in that publisher’s journals

“QUT has a strong Open Access (OA) policy and our library supports Open Access in a number of ways.”

“QUT’s preferred method of OA is our repository for accepted manuscripts, QUT ePrints which has had more than 32 million downloads since its inception in 2003.

“The agreement was negotiated by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) with CSIRO Publishing, on behalf of Australian universities.”

Ms Bradbury said the scientific research community would benefit from publishing in CSIRO Journals under the new agreement in several ways.

“Researchers will have increased visibility of their research outputs. The research can be read worldwide without restriction or need for subscription authentication and a Creative Commons licence is applied to the published article,” Ms Bradbury said.

“There is no charge for authors to publish as OA in these selected CSIRO-owned journals and QUT corresponding authors do not need to do anything to make this happen, as eligibility will be flagged post-acceptance and then instructions are provided on how to set up the article as Open Access.

“QUT users have continued access to read all full text articles published by CSIRO Publishing.”

The first article published under the agreement is “Wastes to profit: a circular economy approach to value-addition in livestock industries”, published in Animal Production Science.

Co-author Dr Jerome Ramirez from QUT School of Mechanical, Medical & Process Engineering, said the study looked at how livestock industries could take part in the circular economy to generate more sustainable outcomes.

“Sustainable outcomes include better nutrient use, and reducing greenhouse emissions, fossil fuel use and landfill waste,” Dr Ramirez said.

“With increased circularity, the industry could continue to sustainably provide food, clothing and many more important products.”

The project is supported by Meat & Livestock Australia through funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as part of its Rural R&D for Profit program and the partners.

Ms Bradbury said support for open access was gaining momentum nationally so it was likely that we would see more ‘Read and Publish’ agreements in Australia. 

“At a recent address to the Press Club, Australia’s new Chief Scientist Dr Cathy Foley said that open access to scientific literature was one of the foundation issues for her term as it was a great enabler for innovation and research commercialisation,” Ms Bradbury said.

QUT Media contact:

Niki Widdowson, 07 3138 2999 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au

After hours: Rose Trapnell, 0407 585 901 or media@qut.edu.au.

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