Copyright, licences and the Institutional Repository
When authors enter into agreement with a publisher they may give the publisher rights over the publication which then restrict the rights the author has over the subsequent use of that publication.
In response the open archives movement has been negotiating with publishers to allow at least some version of the publication to be stored in open access.
Research funding bodies and universities have also been encouraging authors to negotiate publishing agreements that allow open access or to publish in open access journals.
Versions of outputs
A lot of the discussion with publishers has centred around the versions of a publication. In a normal writing process there are many stages but some key versions are:
- the first draft,
- the version first submitted to the publisher, [pre-print]
- the version finally submitted by the author(s) after peer review [post-print or manuscript]
- and the published version [publisher's version].
Different publishers have different attitudes to the placement of these versions in an open access repository. The most commonly agreed solution so far is that publishers allow the post-print version to go into an open access repository. However some publishers insist on their version being deposited while others won't allow any version. This situation is changing as more and more funding bodies and institutions require open access but it is still a matter of individual checking of publisher's policies. Repositories do this with the help of a couple of major projects, the ROMEO project in the UK and the OakList project in Australia. Within these projects repositories share the negotiation with publishers and gather the relevant information in databases which can be searched.
The La Trobe University repository is working with the Oaklist project