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Open Access Publishing

Open Scholarship Librarian

Director of Open Scholarship & Affordable Learning

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David Dunaway

Unpaywall

Impactstory have developed a new extension for the Google Chrome browser called Unpaywall.

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Once you have installed the extension, if an Open Access version of an article is available, a green unpaywall symbol will display on the right of your screen. Simply clicking on this symbol, will take you to the Open Access version. As an example, if you are looking at the closed access version of a paper on the publisher's website but your library does not subscribe to the journal, the Unpaywall symbol will display green if the paper is available in the author's institutional repository. The institutional repository at  LSU is https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/.

SHERPA/RoMEO

SHERPA/RoMEO - publisher copyright & self-archiving policies

SHERPA / RoMEO logo

RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher's policies regarding the self- archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.

What use is RoMEO to me?
If an academic author wants to put their research articles on-line, they are faced with an increasingly complex situation. Evidence shows that citations to articles made openly accessible in this way are taken up and cited more often than research that is simply published in journals. Also some funding agencies require open access archiving for their research, to increase the use of the information generated.

However, some publishers prohibit authors from using their own articles in this way. Others allow it, but only under certain conditions, while others are quite happy for authors to show their work in this way.

Authors can be left confused: RoMEO helps to clarify the situation.

What does RoMEO contain?
RoMEO contains publishers' general policies on self-archiving of journal and conference articles. Each entry provides a summary of the publisher's policy, including what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit.

Open Access Models

Green Open Access: Self-Archiving of Accepted Versions (aka Postprints) by authors in their institutional repository (i.e. LSU Digital Commons) or some other Open Access site. Green Open Access publishers endorse immediate Open Access self-archiving by their authors, allowing authors to make the final version of their manuscript freely available despite being published in a subscription-based journal.

Gold Open Access: Unrestricted and immediate online access to the full content of a scholarly journal via a publisher's website. This model usually requires an Article Processing Charge paid by the author or their institution.

Diamond open access refers to scientific articles published without charging authors for article processing charges.

Hybrid Open Access: Unrestricted and immediate online access to individual articles for which authors or their institution pay an Article Processing Charge. This option does not meet the true definition of Open Access if the author is still required to assign copyright ownership to the publisher or if the article is only available from the publisher's website.If the subscription fee for a journal is not proportionately reduced by the number of articles that are (Hybrid) Open Access, publisher profits will be increased further with limited benefit to authors.

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