CHECK THE PUBLISHER'S POLICY

In order to deposit a work that has been previously published, the publisher's consent is necessary. If the author has signed a contract with a publisher or other institution for the same work and the same field of exploitation (Internet), he should check the terms of the contract carefully or ask for permission from the publisher.

How to know the publisher's policy

The only sure way to know the answer to this question is a written question to the publisher. If we find information about the publishing policy on the website, it is also binding. It is worth to archive it on your hard drive. If it is placed on the site, a screenshot is a good idea.

As more and more authors asked this question, a website was created that allows you to quickly check the policy of scientific journals with respect to repositories - SHERPA / RoMEO.

What does the Sherpa / RoMEO service allow?

The Sherpa / RoMEO service (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) allows you to read the policy of publishers with respect to the author's rights to post materials in repositories, open access databases and on your own website. When the given author wants to obtain information whether the publisher of the journal in which he intends to publish or already published something enables publication in the open access mode, he/she can check it in the SHERPA / RoMEO catalogue.

It allows you to obtain information about the possibilities or limitations of archiving pre-prints, post-prints and publisher versions, possible grace periods (embargo), places where you can archive publications (e.g. institutional repositories or your own websites) and other terms of the policy of sharing.

The service includes 2562 publishers from around the world (as of March 1, 2019)

The database contains 31 publishers of Polish periodicals (as of 1 March 2019)

How does Sherpa / RoMEO work?

By typing in the search engine the words appearing in the title of the magazine or the full name of the journal, we obtain the most important data on the subject of open access.

Colours indicating the archiving policy:

- green - full consent for the publication of preprints or post-prints or final files from the publisher
- blue - consent to the publication of post-prints or final files from the publisher,
- yellow - consent to the publication of preprints,
- white - no permission for archiving.

Pre-print – a ready version of a document that has not yet been reviewed.

Post-print – a ready version of the document after the review stage, taking into account changes made during the reviewing process. Among post-prints, one can distinguish author's versions, that is the one available to the author, which does not take into account the formatting of the publisher and the publishing version, i.e. the version generated by the publisher in the form in which it will be published on the publisher's website.