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Public Access Policies

A Research Guide explaining federal public access policies.

Researchers who receive federal funding may be required to make the products of their research, like the peer reviewed article and underlying data, publicly available per their funding agency's public access policy. In order to comply with the policy, author(s) will need to either deposit their article into an OA repository or publish their article OA.

Open Access (OA) Repository Deposit Options:

  • Agency Repository. Author(s) may be required to deposit the author accepted manuscript (AAM)* version of their article in an agency repository i.e. NIH's PubMed Central. Check funder requirements.
  • Discipline Specific or Institutional Repository. When no agency repository exists, author(s) may be able to deposit their AAM* in a discipline specific repository or an institutional repository like Scholarly Commons @CWRU. Check funder requirements.
  • Data Repository. Author(s) may be required to deposit their data in a data repository like OSF (Open Science Framework) which is supported by CWRU Libraries. Check funder requirements.

Why Choose OA Repository Deposit?

  • Because you may be required to deposit in the agency's repository
  • Because you wish to publish in a non-OA journal

 

*Author accepted manuscript (AAM): the version of the article after it’s been through peer review, including any improvements resulting from that process, and has been accepted by the journal’s editor. It does not include any copyediting, typesetting and proof correction. This is sometimes referred to as the post-print version.

Open Access (OA) Publishing Options:

  • Agency Pays. Author(s) may be able to ask their funding agency to cover the costs of OA publishing. Authors who go this route will need to ask for this funding when applying.
  • No APC Journal. Author(s) may choose to publish in a Diamond OA journal which does not charge publishing fees (APCs) to publish. Visit the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), search for journals in your area, then select the "Without article processing charges (APCs)" filter to find these journals.
  • CWRU OA Publishing Agreements. CWRU authors may choose to publish OA freely under one of CWRU OA Publishing Agreements (see link below). CWRU has agreements with select publishers such as Wiley, Cambridge, and IOP.

Why Choose OA Publishing?

  • Because you want to share the final published version of your article
  • Because you want to have an open license (like a CC-BY) that encourages reuse and sharing
  • Because OA publishing helps increase equity and transparency in research