Guidelines for authors sharing research publications
Library Services has created some guidelines in order to help City authors decide what they can share/re-post/re-publish, such as early drafts of articles, published articles, items in conference proceedings, book chapters, etc.
- Publishers’ Open Access and Archiving policies: it is vital to be aware of these, both for journal articles and book chapters. For journals, in the majority of cases this can be checked using the online resource Sherpa/Romeo. These will govern how publications may be made available by the author, and if a journal article, which version should be used if it has already been published. Careful selection of a journal may be necessary if you want to be able to share your articles easily.
- Publishers’ contracts: these must be checked to see what is permitted in terms of re-use or republication. This may be a traditional paper contract, or the author (lead author if there are multiple authors) may have been asked to agree to contractual terms using an online form, the link to which would have been sent by the publisher in an email.
- Permission from the publisher: this may be necessary to re-post or re-publish, depending on the licence it is published under, or made available under on CRO. If a paper is re-posted or republished, the place of first publication must be given as a citation.
- Third party copyright: this will need permission to re-post or republish; the permission originally obtained only covers the original publication in the journal. (See also article 39 of the REF 2021 HEFCE policy, relating to third party copyright and Open Access.)
- Online sites such as Academia.edu, Researchgate and SSRN: please note that these are not managed in the same way that an institutional repository such as CRO is, which means that embargos, copyright compliance, and other details are not checked (although SSRN does check that the paper is a part of the scholarly discourse in its subject area). They are also not compliant with the HEFCE REF policy. However, they may be useful for networking and collaboration.
- Copies of publications downloaded from electronic resources: generally these must not be re-posted online as this would break the terms of the licences that we have agreed with the provider. An exception to this is if an article has been published with a Creative Commons (CC) licence , which would allow re-use of a copy downloaded from the publisher’s website, with attribution. The exact nature of the re-use permitted will depend on which CC licence is used – see the Creative Commons website for details of the licences.
- Early drafts of journal articles: it is customary in some disciplines for these to be shared online; however caution is advised if the draft is likely to be substantially similar to the version that is going to be published. If this is the case there is a risk that publishers may feel that they can’t publish it.
- If there is more than one author of a paper: it is important to check with all other co-authors that they agree to the paper being shared, re-posted or re-published.