Grant funder Open Access policies

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have policies which require publications emanating from funding they have granted to be open access as either the final published version, or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in an approved repository (e.g. OPAL, the La Trobe Institutional Repository).

• ARC Open Access Policy  
• NHMRC Open Access Policy

On 20 September 2022 the NHMRC released a new Open Access Policy which requires immediate open access for all NHMRC funded outputs, with a phased introduction as follows:

• Outputs from NHMRC grants awarded under Grant Opportunity Guidelines that were issued on or after September 20, 2022 must be immediately open access upon publication. 
• Outputs from all other grants (i.e. grants awarded under grant guidelines issued prior to 20 September 2022) remain under the previous NHMRC open access policy, with a requirement for open access within 12 months of publication. However if these outputs are published on or after 1 January 2024, they must also be immediately open access.
• From 1 January 2024 all outputs from NHMRC funded grants must be immediately open access.

If researchers intend using the repository path (OPAL) for NHMRC open access compliance, and hence will require immediate open access of their Author Accepted Manuscript, the NHMRC has a recommended rights retention statement to use upon submission of the article to ensure they can do this. The rights retention statement can be included in the “acknowledgements” section of the submitted manuscript, and in the accompanying cover letter or note. Please see the Open access and retention of ownership rights (2022) document available for download on the NHMRC Open Accesss Policy site.
 

Note that both ARC and NHMRC require metadata for research outputs to be available in an institutional repository (OPAL) within three months of publication.