Over half of the authors surveyed for this report thought that their agreements with publishers sometimes or always allowed self-archiving of the published version of their paper.* This report tells us that, in reality, just 11.7% of publishers permit self-archiving of the published version of a paper. 62% will allow some form of self-archiving, but this usually means that the author has permission to self-archive their own 'pre-publication' copy, not the publisher's 'post-publication' pdf.
With the majority of research funding bodies now mandating the deposit of funded research outputs in subject or institutional repositories, there is a need for authors to overcome the reluctance to self-deposit mentioned in this report, and to look beyond their understandable preference for publisher versions only.
The findings of a 2005 Key Perspectives survey cited in the report clearly demonstrate a need for improved communications regarding self-archiving, and for authors, publishers and librarians to work together to ensure that Open Access initiatives improve the dissemination of information while maintaining high quality scholarly publishing standards:
In 17% of cases authors believed that they required publisher permission to self-archive; 47% believed that they did not need to ask permission, and 36% did not know. However only 16% said that they did in fact ask permission and 84% did not. 95% of those who believed that permission was not required went ahead and self-archived without it, as did 93% of those who did not know; just under one-third of those who thought it was required also went ahead without asking.
*Self-archiving includes making the article available on a personal or department website, or depositing the article in a subject or institutional repository.
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