Comments on: Self Archive Already!

By: Stephanie Conn

Stephanie Conn — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:32:49 +0000

Super- thanks

By: Erin Taylor

Erin Taylor — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:31:50 +0000

Excellent, then I can suggest to PopAnth authors that they put pre-print versions of their papers somewhere such as Academia.edu, and we can link to those. And advise them about SPARC for the future 🙂

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:10:13 +0000

You are not allowed to post the final publisher’s version, but you are allowed to post a preprint- the version you origionally submitted to the journal, before it went through peer review.

Please see our archives for extensive discussion about business models.

By: Stephanie Conn

Stephanie Conn — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:06:12 +0000

For my Journal it says: “Author cannot archive publisher’s version/PDF”, but we may print copies for private sharing. This is the same as what the fine print said when my article went to press.

Or are you suggesting we should just do it anyway as “You are more likely to simply get an email asking you to remove the PDF from your website.”

Coincidentally I was at a one-day conference on Digital Journals yesterday! And we were all about Open Access, but wondered what the business model would be http://www.consulfrance-toronto.org/spip.php?article2638

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:53:20 +0000

Please see the RoMEO database linked to in my post. It will tell you exactly what is allowed for your journal.

By: Stephanie Conn

Stephanie Conn — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:23:35 +0000

I’m not sure it always IS legal. Does it not depend on the publication? I published an article in a Taylor and Francis Journal. They give you a number of ‘free downloads” ( a lot, 50 or so) to distribute but as I understand it you are not allowed to just post the pdf or distribute it freely.

By: Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:22:22 +0000

Many libraries also provide institutional repositories for their colleagues’ work. Yes, they have to ensure you actually haven’t signed away the right to post the work (publishers that may be reluctant to slam authors for doing it will go after libraries) but if you’re smart, you won’t sign all your rights away; even if the journal doesn’t allow self-archviing in their boilerplate, try changing it. Editors are often barely aware of the rights their operations assume. And will let you submit changes such as the one provided here… http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml.

And if they won’t, maybe you should submit your work elsewhere.

I am thankful for every scholar who bothers to make their published work accessible.

By: Erin Taylor

Erin Taylor — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 03:14:23 +0000

I’m not an expert, but from what I’ve read my understanding of the business model is this:

Publishers make the vast majority of the money they earn from journals by selling access rights to university libraries and similarly large institutions. University libraries pay huge sums to give free access to their students and staff. Individuals rarely pay for access because the cost is too high. Thus, by posting their articles online, academics are giving access to people who are outside of the system and would never pay for the articles. This will not undermine publishers, because university libraries will continue to pay for access rights because they need to ensure that their institution can get hold of this knowledge.

Happy to be given a reality check on this one!

By: Michael E. Smith

Michael E. Smith — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 03:42:50 +0000

Speaking of the SSRN, I can’t figure out what all those pseudo-journals are. Can someone explain these things??

By: Gregg Gordon

Gregg Gordon — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 03:35:58 +0000

Albion, we already have it – SSRN. And, it’s currently the number one repository in the world. If you need any help posting, please call 877-SSRNhelp. Thanks, Gregg.

By: Richard Forster

Richard Forster — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:30:17 +0000

Self-pirating? Wouldn’t you have to think of yourself as a commodity for that to even be possible?

By: Albion Lawrence

Albion Lawrence — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:43:09 +0000

Is there a barrier to setting up something like arxiv.org for the social sciences?

By: Kerim

Kerim — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:16:10 +0000

Yes, I strongly encourage people to consider the impact of self-archiving on journals. My hope is that the process will make the current business model untenable and force the AAA to go to open access.

Less flippantly. Students at schools with free access are not our only audience, nor should they be.

By: Hugh Jarvis

Hugh Jarvis — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:11:06 +0000

As an OA publisher, and a librarian, I would urge my fellow scholars to read up on this issue more (the Jason Baird Jackson interviews are a great place to start), then apply the same professional conduct you demand in the classroom. Before you self-archive, be sure a) you follow copyright (we're the good guys, remember..?), and b) consider the impact on the journal itself. Why should I care about the journal you ask..? Well, you clearly valued it when you submitted your paper, so why diss it now. Further, if the journal is a society publication, by providing a copy outside of normal distribution channels, you may be undermining your own association. For example, if you are an AAA member and have published in an AAA journal, and you provide your own personal copy of your article, instead of encouraging (note, I said encouraging) people to use AnthroSource first, you are actually undermining the revenue that your association gets from Wiley-Blackwell. So if you encourage your 20 or 50 or 200 students to use your personal copy of an article for a class you are teaching, you are hurting all of us in the process if the students can read the article for free through the library subscription. It's holiday time in the US, so perhaps you can consider this a bit like drinking or driving responsibly. Let's all work to make sure our articles are as freely and widely accessible as possible, and not take the quick way out of just pirating our own work for the sake of expediency. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

By: Karen Greenough

Karen Greenough — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:34:40 +0000

Thank you for this post and encouragement, Kerim. I need to do this myself. One thing I would like to add: If you post the pre-published paper, please include citation information. Many times I’ve downloaded papers with no dates or information as to where (if?) they’ve been published. (This goes for gray literature as well. I keep asking, how can reports get published without dates??)