Open Access News

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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Self-archiving when a publisher's policy is unknown

Jim Till, Niche journals and self-archiving, Be openly accessible or be obscure, May 17, 2007.  Excerpt:

Browsing through the SHERPA/RoMEO database of publishers’ self-archiving policies can yield some interesting information. I was looking for niche journals that are intended for members of particular disciplines in a specific geographic area (in my case, Canada)....

In 2005, the quarterly journal Healthcare Policy was launched by "Longwoods Publishing,..."

When I looked for this journal in the SHERPA/RoMEO database, neither the journal title, nor the publisher, were listed....

For example, for the first 50 journal titles that contain the word “Canadian”, I found information about self-archiving policies for only five....Thus, information about self-archiving policies is currently available in the database for only about 10% of these Canadian journals.

Similarly, of 28 journal titles that contain the word “Canada”, I found information about self-archiving policies for only one....

Is this lack of information a result, at least in part, of the SHERPA/RoMEO database currently being incomplete? Probably, yes. And, efforts to improve the database are under way. See, for example, Copyright Knowledge Bank - Database....

However, the main reason for the lack of information about self-archiving policies for these Canada-oriented journals is probably because they do not yet have such policies. How best to deal with this issue, from the perspective of authors/researchers/scholars? ...

One response is to make an effort to retain copyright on an individual, article-by-article, basis. An addendum can be added to the conventional copyright agreement....

But, what to do if the publisher refuses to accept such an addendum? An alternative approach is one that’s been advocated vigorously by Stevan Harnad: ID/OA (Immediate-Deposit, Optional-Access), paired with a “Fair Use” Button. See, for example, Blackwell Instructions for self-archiving manuscripts, by Stevan Harnad, 17 April 2007....