Open access matters

The Australasian Journal of Engineering Education operates under the auspices of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, which is a technical society of Engineers Australia. The Journal publishes research of Australasian and of international significance. Of papers published since Taylor & Francis has been publishing the Journal, the open access paper with the highest number of downloads has more than 11 times the number of downloads of any paper that is not open access. Due to publishing agreements, the majority of the papers that have been published open access and have been written by authors in Europe. In 2022 Taylor & Francis and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) signed a highly significant 3-year agreement. Participating institutions can combine subscription to access papers with open access publication. It is reasonable to expect that by negotiating such agreements with publishers CAUL has dramatically increased the readership and therefore impact of papers by authors at Australian universities – an outcome directly aligned with the aims of the Journal.