YorkSpace Self-Archiving Support

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Self-Archiving Benefits

• If you are unable to make your article openly accessible due to high article processing charges (APCs), most journals allow you to self-archive the author accepted manuscript (AAM) of your work. This ensures that an open access (OA) version of the work is available for readers who may not be able to afford subscription fees to access different journals.

• Making a version of your work openly accessible has been shown to increase the discoverability and impact of your research (Alkhawtani et al., 2019; Dehdarirad & Didegah, 2020; Piwowar et al., 2018; Vadhera et al., 2022). 

• Self archiving your work saves you time as a researcher. Reduce the number of email requests you receive for your paywalled article by making a version of your article openly accessible.

• If you have received a SSHRC, NSERC, or CIHR grant from the federal government of Canada, you are required to make either the final published version or the author accepted manuscript openly accessible within 12 months of publication. Other international funding agencies, such as the NIH in the United States (White House, 2022; University of Illinois Chicago Library, 2022), and the Wellcome Trust, Research Councils, and Cancer Research UK in the United Kingdom (University of Cambridge, 2020) also have open access requirements. Keep your funders' open access policies in mind when selecting a journal for the publication of your research.

• Making a version of your work openly accessible increases information equity, and allows for your research to be read and expanded on globally.

Read more about the benefits of self-archiving in the article, Sharing your work by self-archiving by Abigail Goben and Katherine G. Akers.

Where should I self-archive my work?

There are a variety of places that authors may consider self-archiving their work, including:

• Disciplinary repositories, such as arXiv
• Institutional repositories, such as YorkSpace
• General repositories, such as the Open Science Framework (OSF)
• An author's personal website 

Depending on your publishing agreement, you may be able to upload your AAM in more than one location. We encourage you to deposit your work to YorkSpace, using our Mediated Deposit Service.

For Profit Academic Sites: Various academic social networking sites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, encourage the sharing and reuse of author accepted manuscripts. Please note that several journals and academic publishers do not allow authors to self archive their work on for-profit sites, so please read your publishing agreement carefully prior to posting (Goben & Akers, 2020). These sites may also not be able to guarantee the preservation of your work.

Article Versions

Publishing agreements often include instructions on how three different article versions can be shared by the article's author(s). These versions include the pre-print, the author-accepted manuscript, and the publisher's version.

• Pre-print (or Author's original manuscript): This is the version of the article that is submitted to the journal, prior to peer review, copyediting, or typesetting by the publisher. 

• Author-Accepted Manuscript (or the post-print): This is the version of the article that has passed the peer review stage, but has not been copyedited or typeset by the publisher. This version may sometimes include watermarks, peer-reviewer comments or notes, and/or line counts.

• Publisher's Version (or Version of the Record): This is the final version of the article, published in the journal, after peer review, copyediting, and typesetting.

Further Resources: 

• Open Access Australasia - What are all the different journal article versions?
• Brock University Library - What are pre-prints, post-prints and final articles? 
• OA Works - Pre-prints, post-prints, and publisher's PDF explained

Checking Self-Archiving Policies

Self-archiving policies can typically be found in your publishing agreement with a journal. This agreement is a contract between the author and the journal used to protect the rights of the author and the journal (PKP, n.d.) . If you are unable to locate your publishing agreement, try one of the following strategies listed below:

• Sherpa Romeo: Sherpa Romeo by JISC is a website that aggregates self-archiving and open-access policies of many journals and publishers across the globe. See the Sherpa Romeo Help Guide to get started.

• Journal Website: If you cannot find your journal or publisher using the Sherpa Romeo tool, go to the journal's website and search for the journal's self-archiving, permissions, or copyright webpages. 

• Contacting the Publisher: If you are unable to locate the self-archiving policy, contact the publisher directly in writing to request their self-archiving information, or to request permission to deposit a version of your work to an open access repository.

Creative Commons Licence Support

Creative Commons Licences work within the bounds of copyright law, and allow the author to indicate the ways in which their work can be shared, used, and remixed. Creative Commons Licences are often applied to published Open Access Articles, and occasionally to author accepted manuscripts. 

Further Resources:

• About CC Licences 
• Exploring the Creative Commons Licences - Course on Creative Commons Licences created by Stephanie Quail.

Questions?

Contact York University Libraries at diginit@yorku.ca if you have any questions about self-archiving your works in YorkSpace.

References

Alkhawtani, R. H. M., Kwee, T. C., & Kwee, R. M. (2019). Citation advantage for open access articles in European Radiology. European Radiology, 30(1), 482–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-019-06389-0

Dehdarirad, T., & Didegah, F. (2020). To what extent does the open access status of articles predict their social media visibility? A case study of life sciences and biomedicine. The Journal of Altmetrics, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.29024/joa.29

Goben, A., & Akers, K. G. (2020). Sharing your work by self-archiving: encouragement from the Journal of the Medical Library Association. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 108(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2020.877

Government of Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Office of the Deputy Minister, Communications and Marketing Branch & Communications and Marketing Branch. (2016, December 20). Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications (2015). https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/interagency-research-funding/policies-and-guidelines/open-access/tri-agency-open-access-policy-publications

Piwowar, H. A., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J. D., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375

Public Knowledge Project. (n.d.). Things to Consider - Student Journal Toolkit. PKP Docs. https://docs.pkp.sfu.ca/student-toolkit/en/things-to-consider#publishing-agreements

University of Cambridge (2020). UK Open access policies. https://www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk/funder-open-access-policies/uk-open-access-policies

University of Illinois Chicago Library. Subject and course guides: Publishing, scholarly communication, and open access: Federally funded public access mandates. (n.d.). https://researchguides.uic.edu/c.php?g=252224&p=2745823

Vadhera, A. S., Lee, J. S., Veloso, I. L., Khan, Z. A., Trasolini, N. A., Gursoy, S., Kunze, K. N., Chahla, J., & Verma, N. N. (2022). Open access articles garner increased social media attention and citation rates compared with subscription access research articles: an Altmetrics-based analysis. American Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(13), 3690–3697. https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465221124885

White House (2022). OSTP issues guidance to make federally funded research freely available without delay. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/

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This webpage, created by Priscilla Carmini and Stephanie Quail, is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.