Recently I decided to explore E-LIS, an independent, international, open access repository of information (articles, papers, presentations, syllabi, etc.) relating to library and information science, with the goal of depositing some of my material there. One of the first things I wished to deposit was articles I had written for the journal, Serials Review, published by Elsevier. My sense was that Elsevier’s recent policy change for author copyrights allowed this but upon reviewing the terms again, I began to have doubts. Below is an email I sent to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, who forwarded it on to Elsevier for comment and a response:
Recently I thought about the possibility of self-archiving articles I’ve published in SR in an OA repository such as E-LIS. I thought that this was specifically permissible under terms of copyright agreed to by Elsevier sometime back in 2004. However when I went over the conditions and terms it seems to me that this permission is institution-specific. In other words, if I worked at [XYZ University] and [XYZ University] had an IR then I could deposit any articles I’ve written for SR there with no problem. Can you tell me specifically if depositing them in a third party repository such as E-LIS is in violation of Elsevier’s terms?
Today I received Elsevier’s formal reply:
...Elsevier policy permits authors to post a personal version of the final paper on a personal site or their institute’s website. You are correct in assuming that we do not permit posting of the papers in a third party repository.
I am not a happy camper. This is an arbitrary distinction, in my view, particularly since I no longer have a direct institutional affiliation. (An email conversation on this issue with Peter Suber, author of the Open Access News blog as well as the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, confirmed this.) At the very least such contractual language as exists should be enhanced to make this distinction clear. It certainly isn’t clear now....
Comment. I'll elaborate. An OAI-compliant institutional repository has exactly the same reach and discoverability as an OAI-compliant disciplinary repository. Since nearly all institutional and disciplinary repositories are OAI-compliant, it's arbitrary to permit deposit in one kind and not the other kind. However, the two possibilities are not at all equivalent in cases like Steve's in which the author does not have deposit privileges at an institutional repository. Publishers that insist on this distinction either do not grasp the implications of OAI interoperability or want to place special burdens on authors without IRs or without institutional affiliations. One response, which unfortunately will not help Steve Oberg, is for more institutions to launch their own IRs. Another is for authors like Steve to post their work to a personal web site, but that is not as durable as putting the work in a repository.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/18/2006 12:48:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
