Publishing platforms

Making a work available to an audience occurs through publishing in print, communicating online, performing or exhibiting a work.

There are copyright considerations in making work available through commercial, academic, or self-publishing methods, and which include any material in which copyright may subsist, including data, images, quotes, film frames, and so on.

Are permissions received if required? See Including content of others.

Am I breaching a contract with a funder if I publish to Open Access?

Are permissions received if required? See Including content of others.

Am I breaching a contract with a funder if I am publishing to Open Access, is the journal reputable, and is the agreement clear about ownership of copyright  if I publish with this journal?

For more information about publishing in journals, including the choice of journals, see the Library publishing guide.

Most provisions and licences used within University do not apply when presenting at conferences. This is considered a public use of content, and in many cases Fair Dealing will not apply either - you may find that some content is usable under Fair Dealing for purposes of criticism or review.

Most provisions and licences used within University do not apply when posting to social media.

Social media requires the same adherence to copyright laws as any other publishing activity. Sharing academic papers or material requires you to have the right to do so, remember to check any publishing agreement for your material first. If your material is accessible in a journal or repository (Federation ResearchOnline repository) or your data (Federation.figshare) you can share the link to it without concern.

It is important to remember when dealing with networking/sharing platforms such as ResearchGate/Academia that all the normal rules of copyright still apply. How a researcher may use ResearchGate will depend on what agreement or licence the researcher has with their publisher.

Researchers can check publishers' policies via Sherpa. This site will indicate which version of the work you can load and if there is an embargo period.

Federation ResearchOnline

The aim of Federation ResearchOnline is to promote, store and provide open access to the research and scholarly output of University staff, students and affiliates.

It includes refereed and un-refereed research articles in one of the following categories:

  • Submitted versions of research literature, conference contributions and papers.
  • Accepted versions (author’s final peer-reviewed drafts).
  • Published versions (publisher-created files) if copyright permits.
  • Theses - PHD and Masters by Research.
  • Scholarly research/articles in the form of videos, art works etc.

Higher degree theses are required to be placed in the repository and expected to be made open access in most cases. Follow the process outlined in Copyright and your thesis and including material of others, and retain the permissions. Then when you sign off on the forms as part of your submission, you will be copyright ready.

Contact the Library Federation ResearchOnline staff if you are unsure of the copyright status of your item or contact the publisher.

As the author or creator of a work, in most cases you automatically own copyright to it. When you submit the work for publication, however, you may be asked to assign copyright to the publisher.

The Australian Copyright Council's Information Sheet on Assigning and Licencing provides an overview of rights transfer issues. Read any contract carefully before signing, as you may be able to negotiate to retain some or all of your rights as the original copyright owner.

For more information see the Federation Research Repository policy.

Federation.figshare

Federation.figshare is the University's data repository. The University encourages researchers to share their data publicly while acknowledging that there may be reasons why this cannot occur.

Before you place your data/metadata in any data repository you must ensure that you are permitted to do so in accordance with any legal, ethical, funding, publication, confidentiality or contractual obligations associated with the data.