Preprints: What, Why, and Where?

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The paths of Scholarly Publishing and Open Access can be difficult to follow.  What are your rights as a researcher and scholar, when and how do those rights change, what are publisher rights, who pays whom, and who has access to the published research?  When you have managed to figure out your way on that path, you may encounter various acronyms and terms that can also make the going slow, e.g. CTA, Gold OA, IR, SHERPA, & preprint. What do they mean, and do they really matter?

Let’s just start with one of these terms: the preprint.  In our previous post on Understanding Your Author Rights, we mentioned that you may be able to archive a preprint of your article in our institutional repository (IR), ResearchWorks.  So, what is a preprint and why might you want to archive it?

A preprint is generally understood to be a working paper or a pre-publication version of a paper. Publishers often define preprints more precisely, and may specify that a preprint is an author’s final version, a version prior to peer review, or any version of the paper prior to its final editing and formatting. Review your CTA (Copyright Transfer Agreement) to determine your publisher’s definition of a preprint. Searching SHERPA/RoMEO by journal or publisher can also provide you with specific preprint archiving policies.

If you determine that it is permitted and you would like to archive your preprint, your research and other scholars can enjoy the following benefits:

  • The core of your research becomes available more quickly
  • Your research will have broader exposure, reaching those both with and without access to expensive databases and journals
  • Articles can be open access
  • OA funder mandates can be met (consult your funder or Sherpa/Juliet to determine funder mandates
  • Payments to publisher for Open Access status are not required

Okay, you have made it this far down the road with us and you have determined your CTA allows you to archive your preprint.  You want to quickly provide open access to your scholarship for other researchers. Where do you go?

The University of Washington has its own institutional repository called ResearchWorks.  ResearchWorks is a permanent archiving service for UW faculty and student researchers.  More information about UWB archiving services, including a submission form, can be found on this Campus Library guide.

You may also want to consider archiving your preprints in a disciplinary repository. Amongst the many out there:

Humanities Commons for arts, literature, and digital humanities
SocArXiv  for Social Sciences
PsyArXiv for Psychological sciences
EngrXiv  for Engineering
PubMedCentral (PMC) for the biomedical and life sciences
ArXiv for Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics

Check out OpenDOAR if you want to search for more repositories in your field, or search within repositories.

If you have additional questions, please contact Sarah Leadley, Campus Library Director, at leadley@uw.edu.

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References & Resources:
SHERPA on preprints: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeoinfo.html#prepostprints

 

Understanding Your Author Rights, Part Two

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In a previous post, we discussed the importance of understanding, retaining, and exercising your author rights when you’re publishing your work. But what about your earlier publications? If you’re unsure which rights the publisher permitted you to retain and/or can’t find a copy of your Author Agreement or Copyright Transfer Agreement, the following resources may help.

Finding Information Online

RoMEO, managed by SHERPA services out of the UK, is “a searchable database of publisher’s policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.” (RoMEO FAQ). You can search by a journal’s title, ISSN, or publisher to find information regarding the journal’s open access options and self-archiving policies, the key information included in the publisher’s boilerplate Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA). RoMEO entries often include publisher contact information.

RoMEO’s data also powers other services such as http://rchive.it/.  Like RoMEO, searching for a journal or publisher will yield information regarding OA and self-archiving policies, but adds explanatory and contextual information designed to assist authors in understanding the fine print.

Contacting the Publisher Directly

In our experience, most publishers are very responsive when it comes to answering authors’ questions regarding permissible uses of their work. While few may be willing to alter a CTA post-publication, it’s not unheard of for specific requests to be honored on a case-by-case basis.

If RoMEO doesn’t include a journal or provide the publisher’s contact information, Ulrichsweb is a good next step. The online directory includes all available contact information for the over 300,000 journals and serials indexed.

If you need additional assistance, we’re here to help! Contact Sarah Leadley, leadley@uw.edu, with your questions.

References & Resources:

 

Understanding Your Author Rights, Part One

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After the years-long process of proposing the project, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and positing conclusions, you are finally ready to share your findings with the world. But do you know what rights you have to your work, both before, during, and after you submit your research for publication?

BEFORE

Even if you have yet to make your research public, it is protected under copyright. This gives you, the creator, the exclusive right to:

  • Distribute
  • Reproduce
  • perform and/or display publicly
  • and modify your work.

DURING

Once accepted for publication, most publishers require that you sign a Publication or Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA). Many journals use boilerplate CTAs that often ask authors to sign over their copyright wholesale. This is a problem if you hope to:

  • Use sections of or build off your research in later works;
  • Distribute copies of your article to colleagues or students; and/or
  • Upload your article to a personal or institutional website.

The good news: CTAs are negotiable, as publishers technically do not need the full copyright in order to legally publish your work. The publisher needs:

  • The non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, and receive financial return from your article;
  • To receive attribution as the journal of first publication; and
  • Permission to migrate your article to any future formats and include in collections.

With those rights granted, you retain:

  • The right to re-use and build on your work without restrictions;
  • The ability to increase access, shareability, and citations by sharing your work online; and
  • Your attribution and citation rights as the author.

A simple way to negotiate your rights is to fill out and attach the SPARC Author Addendum (http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf) to the CTA provided by your publisher.   Even if the publisher does not sign the addendum, publication of your article represents tacit acceptance of addendum terms.

It is also important to remember that many organizations providing grant funding also require certain types of access, archiving, and data sharing. You can easily check the requirements of major funding organizations by using SHERPA/JULIET, a UK-based database that is searchable by funder name or country of origin.

AFTER

Depending on the specifics of your CTA, you can archive a pre-print, post-print, or publisher’s version of your article in ResearchWorks, University of Washington’s online institutional repository. Doing so will increase access to and visibility of your work and provide you with a permanent, stable URL to your article.

If you need additional assistance, we’re here to help! Contact Sarah Leadley, leadley@uw.edu, with your questions.

References & Resources:

Faculty and Open Access

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How can faculty be involved in supporting and promoting Open Access efforts? Here are a few suggestions, adapted from SPARC and International Open Access Week:

  • Submit your research articles to OA journals as appropriate to your field.
  • Deposit your preprints in an OA archive, such as UW’S institutional repository ResearchWorks (learn more about ResearchWorks here).
  • If allowed by the Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) you signed with your publisher, deposit your postprints in an OA archive like ResearchWorks. If you’re not sure what your CTA allows or have not yet signed a CTA, check out our posts on understanding your author rights, part one and part two.
  • Deposit your data files in an OA archive along with the articles built on them (learn more about data management via our earlier post). Whenever possible, link to the data files from the articles, and vice versa.
  • Explore using Open Educational Resources (OER) in lieu of expensive textbooks in the courses you teach (learn more about OER via our previous post).
  • When asked to referee a paper or serve on the editorial board for an OA journal, consider accepting the invitation.
  • If you are an editor of a toll-access journal, start an in-house discussion about converting to OA, experimenting with OA, and letting authors retain copyright.
  • Volunteer to serve on your university’s committee to evaluate faculty for promotion and tenure. Make sure the committee is using criteria that, at the very least, does not penalize faculty for publishing in peer-reviewed OA journal, and at best, gives faculty an incentive to provide OA to their peer-reviewed research articles and preprints, either through OA journals or OA archives.
  • Work with your professional societies to make sure they understand OA. Persuade the organization to make its own journals OA, endorse OA for other journals in the field, and support OA eprint archiving by all scholars in the field.
  • And last, but certainly not least, educate the next generation of scientists and scholars about OA, and support their efforts to engage with scholarship in this environment (such as participating in UWB’s Open Access research journal, Interdisciplinarities).

If you have any questions, please contact us.

Understanding Your Author Rights, Part Two

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In the previous post, we discussed the importance of understanding, retaining, and exercising your author rights when you’re publishing your work. But what about your earlier publications? If you’re unsure which rights the publisher permitted you to retain and/or can’t find a copy of your Author Agreement or Copyright Transfer Agreement, the following resources may help.

 Finding Information Online

RoMEO, managed by SHERPA services out of the UK, is “a searchable database of publisher’s policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.” (RoMEO FAQ). You can search by a journal’s title, ISSN, or publisher to find information regarding the journal’s open access options and self-archiving policies, the key information included in the publisher’s boilerplate Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA). RoMEO entries often include publisher contact information.

RoMEO’s data also powers other services such as http://rchive.it/.   Like RoMEO, searching for a journal or publisher will yield information regarding OA and self-archiving policies, but adds explanatory and contextual information designed to assist authors in understanding the fine print.

Contacting the Publisher Directly

In our experience, most publishers are very responsive when it comes to answering authors’ questions regarding permissible uses of their work. While few may be willing to alter a CTA post-publication, it’s not unheard of for specific requests to be honored on a case-by-case basis.

If RoMEO doesn’t include a journal or provide the publisher’s contact information, Ulrichsweb is a good next step. The online directory includes all available contact information for the over 300,000 journals and serials indexed.

If you need additional assistance, we’re here to help! Contact Sarah Leadley, sleadley@uwb.edu, with your questions.

References & Resources

Understanding Your Author Rights, Part One

Posted on by
Reply

After the years-long process of proposing the project, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and positing conclusions, you are finally ready to share your findings with the world. But do you know what rights you have to your work, before, during, and after you submit your research for publication?

Before Publication

Even if you have yet to make your research public, it is protected under copyright. This gives you, the creator, the exclusive right to distribute, reproduce, perform and/or display publicly, and modify your work.

During Publication

Once accepted for publication, publishers routinely ask you to sign a Publication or Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA). These are often boilerplate CTAs that ask authors to sign over their copyright wholesale. This could create barriers if you want to:

  • Use sections of your research in later works;
  • Distribute copies of your article to colleagues or students; and/or
  • Upload your article to a personal or institutional website
  • SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) provides an overview here:  http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum

The good news: CTAs are, in fact, negotiable, as publishers technically do not need the full copyright in order to legally publish your work. The publisher needs:

  • The non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, and receive financial return from your article;
  • To receive attribution as the journal of first publication; and
  • Permission to migrate your article to any future formats and include in collections.

With those rights granted, you retain:

  • The right to re-use and build on your work without restrictions;
  • The ability to increase access, shareability, and citations by sharing your work online; and
  • Your attribution and citation rights as the author.

A simple way to negotiate your rights is to fill out and attach the SPARC Author Addendum (http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf) to the CTA provided by your publisher.   Even if the publisher does not sign the addendum, publication of your article represents tacit acceptance of addendum terms.

After Publication

Depending on the specifics of your CTA, you can archive a pre-, post-, or publisher’s version of your article in ResearchWorks, University of Washington’s online institutional repository. Doing so will increase access to and visibility of your work and provide you with a permanent, stable URL to your article.

If you need additional assistance, we’re here to help! Contact Sarah Leadley, sleadley@uwb.edu, with your questions.

References & Resources