Open Access Archivangelism

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SUMMARY: (1) Under all circumstances, deposit the final, refereed, accepted draft of your journal article (postprint) in your Institutional Repository (IR), immediately upon acceptance for publication. There is no need whatsoever to make a single exception.
    (2) Unless you are certain that you have reason not to, set access to that deposited draft as Open Access (OA) immediately upon deposit. (Otherwise, you can set access as Closed Access, for the duration of any publisher embargo you wish to honor.)
    (3) The only thing even remotely at issue is whether or not, if you deposit a document in your IR and make it OA, you receive a take-down notice from the publisher.
    (4) If you receive a take-down notice and you wish to honor it, set access as Closed Access for the duration of any publisher embargo you wish to honor.
    (5) Meanwhile, if there are multiple, self-contradictory statements of the publisher's policy, act on the most positive one and don't give it another thought until and unless you ever receive a take-down notice.

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On 21-May-09, at 6:58 AM, in the American Scientist Open Access Forum, C.J.Smith posted "The definitive answer from Wiley-Blackwell":

In the Wiley-Blackwell copyright assignment form, which most authors publishing in this company’s journals will sign, it states (under item ‘C.2. Permitted Uses by Contributor > Accepted Version’) that:

“Re-use of the accepted and peer-reviewed (but not final) version of the Contribution shall be by separate agreement with Wiley-Blackwell”

I took this to mean that authors can, if they want to, approach Wiley-Blackwell on an article-by-article basis for permission to deposit their final draft manuscripts in their institutional repository.

However, having chased up permission with Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of an author here at the Open University, I received (after a number of email exchanges) the following (apparently definitive) answer from their Associate Permissions Manager:

“The submission version is the only version we allow to be placed into institutional repositories. We do not allow the post-peer review article, the author’s final draft, or any other version to be deposited. Therefore, I can confirm that permission is hereby refused in this case.”

So, unfortunately, given the size of Wiley-Blackwell (fourth largest academic journals publisher?), it seems we have a disappointing barrier to Green OA. Of course, Wiley has always not permitted final draft self-archiving, but it now appears that in merging with Blackwell they have stuck with this policy rather than embracing Blackwell’s.

Although Wiley-Blackwell do offer compliance with the ‘major’ funder mandates (e.g. NIH), it leaves me wondering how they intend to serve their authors who are mandated (for example) by one of the UK Research Councils. Have they thought this through? Are they prepared to lose authors who (in theory at least) could not possibly publish with them because they are not permitted to self-archive?

Colin Smith
Research Repository Manager
Open Research Online (ORO)
Open University Library
Web: http://oro.open.ac.uk
Blog: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/oro
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/smithcolin

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I don't think anything like a definitive answer has been reached through this proxy permission-seeking, insofar as Wiley's Green-status is concerned: All we have is coyness and self-contradiction from Wiley, about whether or not it endorses immediate author Open Access Self-Archiving of the final, refereed draft (postprint).

First, there appear to be three Wileys:

John Wiley & Sons (GREEN)
Wiley-VCH Verlag Berlin (GREEN)
Wiley-Blackwell (GRAY)

Second, the three Wileys have inconsistent self-archiving policy statements -- inconsistent among the three of them, and inconsistent within each.

Wiley-Blackwell says this :

Wiley-Blackwell journal authors can use their accepted article in a number of ways, including in publications of their own work and course packs in their institution. An electronic copy of the article (with a link to the online version) can be posted on their own website, employer's website/repository and on free public servers in the subject area. For full details see authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/faqs_copyright.asp .

Wiley-VCH says this (sample from one of its journals):

and John Wiley & Sons says this (sample from one of its journals):

Now let me give some sensible practical advice to authors and Repository Managers alike:

(1) Under all circumstances, deposit the final, refereed, accepted draft of your journal article (postprint) in your Institutional Repository (IR), immediately upon acceptance for publication. There is no need whatsoever to make a single exception.

(2) Unless you are certain that you have reason not to, set access to that deposited draft as Open Access (OA) immediately upon deposit. (Otherwise, you can set access as Closed Access, for the duration of any publisher embargo you wish to honor.)

(3) The only thing even remotely at issue is whether or not, if you deposit a document in your IR and make it OA, you ever receive a take-down notice from the publisher.

(4) If and when you ever receive a take-down notice and you wish to honor it, set access as Closed Access for the duration of any publisher embargo you wish to honor.

(5) Meanwhile, if there are multiple, self-contradictory statements of the publisher's policy, act on the most positive one and don't give it another thought until and unless you receive a take-down notice.

And above all, reflect that if the millions of articles that have been made OA (by computer scientists, physicists, economists, and all other disciplines) since the 1980's had waited (or asked) for a clear, unambiguous green light in advance from each publisher, we would have virtually none of those millions of articles accessed, used and built-upon across those decades by the many users worldwide whose institutions could not afford access to the publisher's subscription edition.

A word to the wise...

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum