Open Access Publishing

Are you wondering if you can share your published work on your homepage? Or if your institution can archive your published work in a institutional or subject repository? There are several ways to determine a journal or publisher's copyright and open access policies:

• Publishing agreement - Review your publishing agreement or copyright transfer agreement. Relevant information about sharing your work might be found under section headings like 'Rights Retained By You As Author' or 'Permitted Uses By Contributor'.
• Publisher or journal website - Check the publisher's or journal's website for copyright or usage webpages. Copyright policies are usually located on pages with titles like: Publishing Policies, Author Guidelines, Copyright Policies, Sharing Policies or sometimes under Frequently Asked Questions. 
• Open policy finder - Use Open Policy Finder to determine publisher copyright and open access archiving policies. Open Policy Finder compiles and summaries policies making them easier to find and understand. They also have a version called Open Access for Books that provides an overview of publishers' book policies.
• ROARMAP - Use The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) to search their registry of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.

Publishers' policies may change or be unclear; if you're uncertain, check the policies for the publisher/journal you're working with directly. Please reach out to your subject librarian if you would like us to take a look - we can advise but our advice cannot be taken as legal advice. For very tricky questions, we may refer you to legal counsel.

Open Policy Finder is a tool that can be used to research journals to publish in or to determine how works published in certain journals can be shared. Open Policy Finder aggregates, summarizes, and includes direct links to journal policies, making it easier to research and compare open access policies and requirements.

Article Versions

When using Open Policy Finder it is important to know the differences between Published, Accepted, and Submitted versions of articles:

• Published Version - This is the version of record published in the journal. It has been through peer review and copy editing, so it will usually contain publisher logos and the journal's formatting. 
• Accepted Version - This is the final version of an article that has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by a journal, but before copyediting, so it does not contain the publisher's logos or other enhancements. 
• Submitted Version - This is the version of the work as you submitted it to the journal to be considered for publication.

Locations for Sharing

It is also important to know the differences between institutional repositories, non-profit and preprint repositories, and other websites:

• Non-commercial Institutional Repository - An online platform for preserving and disseminating research created by a society, university, or other organization.
  • Example - UDSpace
• Funder-designated Repository - An online platform designated by a funder as the place where authors should deposit any publications that were supported by grant funding from the organization.
  • Example - PubMed Central
• Non-commercial Subject Repository or Preprint Repository - A discipline specific online platform for preserving and disseminating articles, data sets, code or other digital research outputs. A preprint server is a digital repository that collects and stores author's original manuscripts or submitted manuscripts, which are versions of articles submitted to journals before peer review.
  • Example - arXiv, bioRxiv, ChemRxiv
• National Repository System - The official, recognized repository of a particular country or group of countries that stores broad scholarly outputs of that nation or nations. 
  • Example - Europe PMC
• Author's Homepage - A personal website or a personal website on an employers' website.

Most open access publications use Creative Commons licenses. These licenses are a way for you to modify your copyright to allow others to share, use, download and even re-mix your content with your permission.

To explore the different types of licenses see here: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/