Did you know that eight research funders in Canada require researchers to deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts in a publicly accessible archive after they are accepted for publication? Open access archives or institutional repositories provide permanent, stable, barrier-free access to research papers. YorkSpace is one such repository eligible for deposit of research funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

PubMed Central Canada

When launched, PubMed Central Canada will become another place to deposit Canadian health research outputs. In fact it will be a national archive of life sciences literature which along with UK PubMed Central will form part of the PubMed Central International (PMCI) network providing worldwide visibility for researchers.

This will help promote Canadian health research as it becomes searchable by PubMed and major search engines. 63% of publishers already allow author self-archiving of refereed manuscripts in institutional repositories such as YorkSpace and PubMed Central. Publishers’ policies can be checked at the following site (Sherpa Romeo, University of Nottingham):

Alternatively, authors who wish to enable wider access to their work may publish in open access journals. A list of these journals is available in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). In some cases, article processing charges may apply. Some subscription journal publishers also provide open access at the article level on payment of a fee. York subsidizes article processing costs for select open access publishers, for example, BioMed Central (BMC), Public Library of Science (PLoS) and Hindawi.

If you wish to avail yourself of any of these opportunities, please talk to your subject librarian. For further information on York support for open access, check the Scholarly Communications Initiative webpage for CIHR researchers.

--Leila Ferrnandez, Science Librarian