OPAL
OPAL is La Trobe University’s institutional repository. It preserves, promotes and provides worldwide access to publications, theses, data and educational resources for university staff and researchers.
OPAL includes research that is:
- made available subject to copyright and licensing agreements
- discoverable through search engines (such as Google), so they can be disseminated and found.
Frequently Asked Questions
Having your publications in OPAL:
- increases their impact and citation rates by improving their visibility
- opens up opportunities for future collaboration and data sharing
- may be an alternative to paying for Open Access publishing via author publishing fees
- assists with potential grant and funding applications.
Funding contracts usually require you to make your research freely available by having your publications in a subject or institutional repository. The Library can help you comply with your funding obligations.
We ensure your publication:
- is made available subject to copyright and licensing agreements
- has the correct description on its record, so it can be disseminated and found
- is discoverable through search engines (such as Google).
The following items are accepted in digital form (subject to checking of copyright and license agreements):
- Journal articles
- Conference Papers
- Book chapters
- Books
- Research papers/reports
- Discussion papers
- Working papers
- Technical reports
- Theses (PhD and masters by research theses are published in the repository as part of the graduation process. Read more about thesis submission.)
- Images
- Audio and video
- Datasets
- Open education resources
If it's not possible to keep the full text of a publication in the repository, a metadata record about the publication can still be added to promote your work.
You can upload an accepted version* of your research publication following the prompts in My Publications, where it will be allocated a DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
We'll check copyright and licensing policies, record any restrictions on access and notify you via email. We'll also add relevant metadata to the record. If not restricted, the manuscript full text will be loaded and linked in OPAL.
You can check the OPAL record to see the number of hits, visitors and downloads on your work.
Generally, copyright restrictions mean we cannot make either the publisher's version or the publisher's proofs of articles available in the repository. We may be able to make the final peer reviewed or corrected/accepted versions available subject to any embargo period the publisher has applied. We will check and apply any publishing restrictions outlined in the licence agreement between you and the publisher. Please provide a copy of the licence agreement with the accepted version.
* An accepted version (sometimes referred to as the Post print) is the author's version of the manuscript of an article that has been accepted for publication and which may include any author-incorporated changes suggested through the processes of submission processing, peer review and editor-author communications. They do not include other publisher value-added contributions such as copy-editing, formatting, technical enhancements and (if relevant) pagination.
Much of the content in OPAL is Open Access - meaning those publications and data are freely accessible to readers.
To limit your search to these items, tick the "Open access items only" checkbox when doing your search. If you don't tick that checkbox, there may be records in the results that don't have any documents attached.
You can download documents in the repository for personal use, but reuse of material is subject to copyright law. Some material is licensed under less restrictive conditions. Check each record for copyright information. If in doubt, contact one of the following teams:
| Contact | Details |
|---|---|
| Repository |
|
| Research Liaison team |
|
| Copyright |
|
Once your research is written it will be protected by copyright. Copyright will also apply to any drafts of your research. You will own the copyright in your research, unless there's an agreement in place that specifies otherwise.
As the copyright owner, you'll have exclusive rights to:
- reproduce your research in any format
- publish your research
- communicate your research, this means to make it available online, or email or fax it to someone
- perform your research in public
- adapt your research.
If anyone else wants to do any of these things, they will need your permission.
Contact the following team with details about the document(s) in question:
| Contact | Details |
|---|---|
| Repository |
|