Scholarly Communication

When Can I Deposit What? Everything You Need to Know about Permissions and Versions When Submitting to the Repository

Every time you submit an item to the IUScholarWorks repository, you must accept the IUScholarWorks License. By accepting our non-exclusive license, you acknowledge that you either own the copyright to the work you are depositing, or you have been granted permission by the copyright holder to deposit it. If you are depositing material that has already been published, you will first need to find out if you hold the copyright.

When you publish an article in a journal, copyright is typically transferred to the publisher (this will be indicated in your original publishing agreement). If the publisher owns the copyright to your work, you will need to check whether they allow you to deposit it in the institutional repository. Fortunately, most publishers have developed explicit policies that speak to this, so you often won’t need to contact them directly. You can search for a publisher’s copyright policy on their website, or use the Sherpa/Romeo database.

When publishers do allow you to deposit your work in an institutional repository, they frequently impose restrictions, such as an embargo period and/or the type of version permitted.

Embargoes

Publisher embargo periods can range anywhere from 6 to 24 months (and sometimes longer). If a publisher requires you to embargo your work, you can still deposit it in the institutional repository now and designate the amount of time after which it can be made openly available.

Version types

There are three types of versions that a publisher may or may not allow you to submit to the institutional repository:

Pre-print – a draft of an article before peer review

Post-print – the final, peer-reviewed article submitted for publication

Publisher PDF – the final, peer-reviewed article in the publisher’s typesetting and formatting

It’s important to note that content-wise, the post-print and the publisher PDF versions are identical. Many more publishers allow authors to deposit the post-print version in the repository than they do the publisher PDF version.

If you are ever unsure about what work you can or can’t deposit, please contact the IUScholarWorks Team.


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