Self-Archiving FAQ

What is the difference between distributed and central self-archiving?

All OAI-compliant Eprint Archives are interoperable. This means their contents are harvestable by cross-archive search engines such as OAIster or citebase into global virtual archives. Hence OAI has eliminated the difference between self-archiving documents in one central archive or many distributed archives. Users need not know where documents are located in order to find, browse and retrieve them (any more than they do when they are using commercial indexing or abstracting services); and the full texts are all retrievable.

What is the difference between institutional and central Eprint Archives?

Because of OAI-compliance , it no longer matters whether documents are archived in one central Eprint Archive or in many distributed ones. They are all interoperable and harvestable into one virtual "central" archive in which all contents are seamlessly navigable and retrievable. Strategically, however, there is a difference between institutional and central self-archiving.

Self-archiving is done in order to maximize the visibility and accessibility of refereed research, and hence to maximize its usage by researchers and its impact on research. The benefits of maximizing research impact are felt by the researcher and the researcher's institution, rather than by some more central entity (such as the research discipline or learned society). The academic reward system (salaries, research funding) is centered on the researcher's institution. Publishing and impact confer advantages on both researcher and institution. Hence the researcher's institution is the natural one to host self-archiving and ensure that its archives are filled with its annual research output.

See the Institutional Archives Registry and List.

Who should self-archive?

The Budapest Open Access Initiative is focussed specifically on the refereed research literature, across all disciplines. It is the authors of these articles who should self-archive them, in order to maximize the visibility, accessibility, uptake and impact of their work. The self-archiving itself, however, though rapid and simple, can be done by "proxy," by digital archivers in the researcher's institution or its library . It can also be done in bulk, by (free) software (under development).

See the Institutional Archives Registry and List.

What is an Eprint?

Eprints are the digital texts of peer-reviewed research articles, before and after refereeing. Before refereeing and publication, the draft is called a "preprint." The refereed, accepted final draft is called a "postprint." (Note that this need not be the publisher's proprietary PDF version!) Eprints include both preprints and postprints (as well as any significant drafts in between, and any postpublication updates). Researchers are encouraged to self-archive them all. The OAI tags keep track of all versions. All versions should contain links to the publisher's official version of record.

Why should one self-archive?

In order to maximize the visibility and accessibility of one's research, and hence the usage and impact of one's work. Merely publishing it provides minimal impact: Also self-archiving it provides maximal impact.

What should be self-archived?

All significant stages of one's work, from the pre-refereeing preprint to the peer-reviewed, published postprint, to postpublication updates should be self-archived. The OAI tags keep track of all versions. (Note that the postprint need not be the publisher's proprietary PDF: there should always be a link to the publisher's official version, however, for scholarly purposes.)

Is self-archiving publication?

Self-archiving is definitely not publication. For purposes of establishing priority and asserting copyright, anything that is made public, even on a single piece of paper, meets the legal definition of "publication." Hence so does self-archiving. But for scholarly and scientific purposes, only meeting the quality standards of peer review, hence acceptance for publication by a peer-reviewed journal, counts as publication. Self-archiving should on no account be confused with self-publication (vanity press). (Self-archiving pre-refereeing preprints, however, is an excellent way of establishing priority and asserting copyright.)

What about copyright?

The author holds the copyright for the pre-refereeing preprint, so that can be self-archived without seeking anyone else's permission. Sixty-eight percent of journals already give their green light to postprint self-archiving. With the remaining 32%, the author can either try to modify the copyright transfer agreement to reserve the right to self-archive the postprint, or, failing that, can append or link a corrigenda file to the already self-archived preprint. See " Is self-archiving legal? ," "What if the publisher forbids self-archiving the preprint? " and the Rights MEtadata for Open archiving Project and Directory of Journals' Policies on Author Self-Archiving

What if my copyright transfer agreement explicitly forbids self-archiving ?

See " Is self-archiving legal? ," "What if the publisher forbids self-archiving the preprint? " and the Rights MEtadata for Open archiving Project and Directory of Journals' Policies on Author Self-Archiving .

Peer-review reform: Why bother with peer review?

Peer review is not without its flaws, but improving peer review first requires careful testing of alternative systems, and demonstrating empirically that these alternatives are at least as effective as classical peer review in maintaining the quality of the refereed literature (such as it is).  No alternatives have yet been tested or demonstrated effective.

Hence current peer review reform or elimination proposals are merely speculative hypotheses at this time, and red herrings insofar as the freeing of the peer-reviewed literature is concerned: The self-archiving initiative is directed at freeing the current peer-reviewed literature, such as it is, from the impact/access barriers of Subscription/License/Pay-per-view access-tolls, now. It is not directed at freeing the literature from peer review, or at testing or implementing untested alternatives to peer review (Cf. library.caltech.edu/publications/ScholarsForum/042399sharnad.htm
and www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Ebiomed/com0509.htm#harn45 ).

The benefits of freeing the refereed literature now are a sure thing; the benefits (if any) from future alternatives to peer review (if any) are purely hypothetical, and certainly nothing to hold us back from self-archiving and wait for .

Is self-archiving legal?

Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual property. The author holds the copyright and is free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as he sees fit. For example, the pre-refereeing preprint can always be legally self-archived .

Self-archiving of one's own, non-plagiarized texts is in general legal in all cases but two. The first of these two exceptions is irrelevant to the kind of self-archiving BOAI is concerned with, and for the second there is a legal alternative.

Exception 1: Where exclusive copyright in a "work for hire" has been transfered by the author to a publisher -- i.e., the author has been paid (or will be paid royalties) in exchange for the text -- the author may not self-archive it. The text is still the author's "intellectual property," in the sense that authorship is retained by the author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, but the exclusive right to sell or give away copies of it has been transfered to the publisher.

Exception 1 is irrelevant to BOAI , because BOAI is concerned only with peer-reviewed research, for which the author is paid nothing, and no royalty revenue or author fee is expected, sought, or paid.

Exception 2: Where exclusive copyright has been assigned by the author to a journal publisher for a peer-reviewed draft, copy-edited and accepted for publication by that journal, then that draft may not be self-archived by the author (without the publisher's permission).

The pre-refereeing preprint, however, has already been (legally) self-archived. (No copyright transfer agreement existed at that time, for that draft.)

So in those cases where the the copyright transfer agreement does not yet give the author the green light to self-archive the refereed final draft ("postprint"), there is always the alternative of self-archiving a corrigenda file alongside the already archived preprint, listing the changes that need to be made to make the pre-refereeing preprint conform to the refereed postprint.

See the Directory of Journal Self-Archiving Policies. Of the nearly 10,000 journals surveyed over 90% are already "green" (i.e., they have already give their official green light to author self-archiving: 62% for postprints, 29% for preprints). Many of of the remaining 9% "gray" journals will agree if the author asks.

Perhaps the most sensible default strategy of all is the one that the physicists have been successfully practicing since 1991 and computer scientists have been practicing since even earlier: "don't-ask/don't-tell": Simply self-archive your preprint as well as your postprint, and wait to see whether the publisher ever requests removal. After nearly a decade and a half of practicing this default strategy, and at least a million and a half self-archived papers in physics and computer science, only a handful of papers have ever been removed because a publisher requested it. On the contrary, virtually all physics journals and most computer science journals have since become officially "green" in response to the physics and computer science community's evident desire and determination to enjoy the research benefits of providing open access to their own papers by self-archiving them, and they now even encourage the self-archiving. In contrast, those researchers who during that decade and a half have not been practicing this default strategy have instead needlessly lost a decade and a half's worth of cumulative research impact .

Another alternative is to provide "almost-OA" by depositing embargoed articles as Closed Access instead of Open Access. Institutional Repositories can all implement the semi-automatic "email eprint request" Button, which provides almost-immediate access even to these embargoed deposits. When individual users reach a Closed Access item, they paste their email addresses in a box provided by the IR, click, and the author receives an instant email request for the eprint. With one click, the author authorizes fulfilling the eprint request, and the IR automatically emails the eprint to the requester.

What if the publisher forbids preprint self-archiving?

The right to self-archive the refereed postprint is a legal matter, because the copyright transfer agreement pertains to that text. But the pre-refereeing preprint is self-archived at a time when no copyright transfer agreement exists and the author holds exclusive and full copyright to that draft. So publisher policy forbidding prior self-archiving of preprints is not a legal matter, but merely a journal policy matter (just as it would be if the journal were to forbid the submission of papers by authors with blue-eyed uncles!). (It would become a legal matter -- but a contractual matter, not a copyright one -- if the author were to sign a contract explicitly stating that the unrefereed preprint had not been previously self-archived online. Obviously an author should strike such arbitrary stipulations out of any contract.)

This policy goes by the name of the " Ingelfinger Rule ," originally invoked by the Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Franz Ingelfinger, in order to protect public health (and the NEJM's priority) from any publicity about unrefereed findings prior to publication.

The Ingelfinger Rule (sometimes also referred to as a "prepublication embargo ") is accordingly not a copyright matter, but a journal submission policy: "We will not consider for publication any preprint that has been previously self-archived."

BOAI makes no recommendations to authors regarding compliance with such policies, except to note that (1) the Ingelfinger Rule is not a legal matter, (2) the number of journals invoking the Ingelfinger Rule is rapidly diminishing in the face of self-archiving pressure from authors in the interests of research progress (Nature, for example, has dropped it, and most other journals are following suit) and (3) the Ingelfinger Rule was probably never enforceable in any case.

What can researcher/authors do to facilitate self-archiving?

Make sure that your university or research institution has installed OAI-compliant Eprint Archives .

Self-archive your pre-peer-review preprints in your institutional (or central) Eprint Archives.

Self-archive your post-peer-review postprints (or corrigenda file) in your institutional (or central) Eprint Archives.

See the Institutional Archives Registry and List.

What can researchers' institutions do to facilitate self-archiving?

See " How can an institution facilitate the filling of its Eprint Archives ?"

See the Institutional Archives Registry and List.

Sign the Declaration of Institutional Commitment to Providing OA .

What can libraries do to facilitate self-archiving?

Digital librarians are the natural candidates for maintaining the Eprint Archives, their institution's outgoing collection of peer-reviewed research output.

(1) Offer trained digital librarian help in showing faculty how to self-archive their papers in the university Eprint Archive (it is very easy).

(2) Offer trained digital librarian help in doing "proxy" self-archiving, on behalf of any authors who feel that they are personally unable (too busy or technically incapable) to self-archive for themselves. Authors need only supply their digital full-texts in word-processor form: the digital archiving assistants can do the rest (usually only a few dozen key/mouse-strokes per paper).

(The proxy self-archiving will only be needed to set the first wave of self-archiving reliably in motion. The rewards of self-archiving -- in terms of visibility, accessibility and impact -- will maintain the momentum once the archive has reached critical mass. And even students can do for faculty the few keystrokes needed for each new paper thereafter.)

(3) Digital librarians, collaborating with web system staff , should be involved in ensuring the proper maintenance, backup, mirroring, upgrading, and migration that ensures the perpetual preservation of the university Eprint Archives. Mirroring and migration should be handled in collaboration with counterparts at all other institutions supporting OAI-compliant Eprint Archives.

See the Institutional Archives Registry and List.

What can research funders do to facilitate self-archiving?

Mandate that the research that is publicly funded must not merely be published but it must be publicly accessible online (whether through self-archiving, open-access journals, or both) as recommended by the UK Government Science and Technology Committee as well as the Berlin Declaration.

Make it part of grant applications that CVs and bibliographies citing the applicant's prior work should contain links to the online full-text (whether self-archived or in open-access journals, or both).

Sign the Declaration of Institutional Commitment to Providing OA .

What can publishers do to facilitate self-archiving?