Over the last decade or so, there has been a global push towards free and open access in many areas of publicly funded research. One of the important features shared by the open access schemes adopted by national and international research organisations is the need to place their research results in a readily accessible format for end-users. The key goal here is to ensure that the end-users are able lo make full use of the relevant research material. In order to make sure that research material available in a readable and intelligible format to end-users, it is important that they are translated into the local languages of countries that are the focus of the research. The purpose of this article is to examine how copyright law impacts on the translation of research material generated by research organisations in the process of implementing open access schemes, in order lo ensure that these materials are available in a readily accessible and intelligible format to end-users.