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How to Make Your Research Open Access

(Whether You're at Harvard or Not)

Peter Suber

Director, Harvard Open Access Project

Advisor, Office for Scholarly Communication

Fellow, Berkman Center

October 23, 2012

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Online handout =

bit.ly/how-oa

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Research articles

As opposed to:

  • books
  • theses and dissertations
  • conference presentations
  • datasets
  • courseware
  • audio, video, multimedia
  • source code

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1. Publish in an OA journal ("gold" OA).

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2. Deposit in an OA repository ("green" OA).

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Publish in an OA journal

  • Find a suitable journal
    • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
    • Differences in quality, prestige, licensing, fees

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Publish in an OA journal

  • Find a suitable journal
    • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
    • Differences in quality, prestige, licensing, fees
  • If the best journal for your purposes charges a publication fee...
    • Your funder or employer may pay it
    • Harvard Open-Access Publishing (HOPE) fund

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Deposit in an OA repository

  • Find a suitable repository
    • at your institution or in your field
    • Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
    • Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
    • Digital Scholarship at Harvard (DASH)

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Deposit in an OA repository

  • Find a suitable repository
    • at your institution or in your field
    • Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
    • Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR)
    • Digital Scholarship at Harvard (DASH)
  • Usually compatible with publishing in a non-OA journal
    • Best-kept secret of OA

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Permissions

  • OA journals and OA repositories both need permission before making work OA.
  • Sometimes you're in a position to give this permission, and sometimes you're not.

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OA journals

  • You can give permission on your own. Just sign the publishing agreement.

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OA repositories

  • Unrefereed preprints:
    • You can give permission on your own. Just deposit.

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OA repositories

  • Unrefereed preprints:
    • You can give permission on your own. Just deposit.
  • Refereed postprints:
    • You probably transferred key rights to a publisher and will need its permission. But...
    • Your publisher probably gives standing permission to deposit peer-reviewed manuscripts in OA repositories. (Note the version.)
    • Read your publishing agreement, or look up the publisher policy in SHERPA RoMEO.

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OA repositories, cont.

  • If your publisher does not give standing permission...
    • ask for permission, or
    • try an author addendum

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OA repositories, cont.

  • If your publisher does not give standing permission...
    • ask for permission, or
    • try an author addendum
  • For standing permission without depending on publishers...
    • work for a Harvard-style OA policy at your institution

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Online handout =

bit.ly/how-oa

Thanks, Peter Suber.

psuber@cyber.law.harvard.edu

bit.ly/suber-gplus