Most publishers allow authors to share versions of their work, subject to several conditions. If your published work has a DOI, you can use shareyourpaper.org to walk through checking to see whether and how you can share your work. Open Policy Finder is another good resource for finding publisher and journal policies on self-archiving. Typically, publisher policies specify the following details for sharing your work:
- Timing: Some publishers require an embargo before sharing your work – authors must wait a set period of time after the journal version is first published before making their work freely available online. (Many journals do not require an embargo, however.)
- Platform: Most publisher policies specify exactly where article versions can be shared, for example permitting sharing in institutional repositories like Libra but barring sharing on for-profit academic social networks like Academia.edu and ResearchGate.
- Version: The policy requirement for submission of the “final peer-reviewed manuscript” may be fulfilled by submitting the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM), which is the final, peer-reviewed manuscript prior without the journal's formatting and processing. Please note that, per the 2022 OSTP Public Access Policy Memo, if you have federal funding, you will be required to make both the “scholarly publications” and the underlying “scientific data” open access.
- License: Most open access advocates believe that to be fully open, a work should have an open license permitting reuse by others, preferably a CC-BY license allowing unlimited reuse subject only to proper attribution. However, many publishers require more restrictive licenses, or do not permit any open license at all.
- Link to published version: To ensure that readers associate a free version with the correct final published article, publishers typically require (and libraries encourage) that authors include citation information (including a link or DOI) for the final published version as part of the record for their deposited open version(s).
If you have federally funded research, you will be required to publish under an open access model. The OSTP Public Access Memo (also known as the Nelson Memo, but formally entitled “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research”) was released in August 2022 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under the direction of Dr. Alondra Nelson. The memo guides all federal agencies to develop plans indicating how they will provide public access to the results of federally funded research.
Each federal agency has its own specific open access publishing requirements — to determine what applies to you, review the grant agreement you signed with the agency as well as that agency’s specific policy. Please review our 2022 OSTP Public Access Policy Memo guide for more information.
Again, check Open Policy Finder and then confirm on the publisher’s website the precise details of your journal’s policy if you use this method of sharing your work.