The green route has developed quickly thanks to the appearance of repositories and Open Access mandates or requirements and as a result of changes to the copyright transfer agreements used by journals. One of the most effective ways to make your publications open access is to self-archive them in the University of Barcelona’s institutional repository. Thus, self-archived refereed journal articles conform to the standards created by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), so search engines and other tools can treat them as a single archive. And users will not need to know which files are there or where they are located in order to find them and use their contents.
Nowadays, many publishers permit authors to reproduce published articles in the open repositories of the institution where they work or in disciplinary repositories. However, there are some points you should bear in mind before publishing an article via this channel.
Publishing an article that has already been published in a scientific journal in the University of Barcelona’s institutional repository
Already published articles should be published directly via the GREC Curricul@ application rather than via the repository. To publish an article this way, you need to have access to the application. If you do not, you should request an access code and password here. In principle, all active researchers have access to the application.
Whenever you publish an article record in your Curricul@ profile, you have the option of attaching a document. However, you should carefully consider what information you provide in order not to violate the terms of any copyright transfer agreement or license to publish you have signed with the publisher.
The versions that publishers may permit you to deposit in the repository are: the final published article; the last version you submitted (corrected, but without the formatting of the published article); or your original draft, prior to peer review and publisher’s corrections (very few journals will only permit you to publish this version).
It is important to deposit the correct version of the document in the repository (pre-print, post-print, publisher's version).
Self-archiving policy of journals
To find out about the self-archiving policy of a particular journal, consult the following websites:
Self-archiving publisher policies. Database developed by the CRAI Research Unit.
You may also find this information on the website for the journal, or you can consult the publisher directly.
What to do if a journal does not permit self-archiving
Nowadays, most journals permit some kind of self-archiving, but there are still some exceptions. In this case, it is possible you to use an addendum, which is a document that can be appended to the copyright transfer agreement or license to publish that a publisher sends you when your contribution has been accepted. This
Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine is a helpful tool. Addenda can also be used to change a journal’s default terms on self-archiving. For example, they can be used to shorten the embargo period, or if you would like to be able to deposit the published journal article rather than the accepted version.
Visibility of the repository
Documents in the UB Digital Repository appear in Google and Google Scholar search results and are included in other repositories known as harvester systems:
Recercat: a Catalan research repository, coordinated by the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia (CSUC);
Recolecta: a harvester created by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), which includes all repositories in Spain;
OpenAIRE: a European system initially created to provide access to the scientific output of projects affected by the FP7 Open Access Pilot. It currently offers access to research documents contained in the main European repositories.