Types of policy wording

The basic types of policy are shown below. It is important to note that as well as whole-institution policies, there may be policies made at sub-institutional level (departments, schools). This is what Arthur Sale termed the 'Patchwork Mandate' since a patchwork of departmental mandatory policies on Open Access can add up in time to a policy that covers the whole institution.

Type 1: Immediate deposit with immediate Open Access

This type of policy would require authors to deposit their articles upon acceptance for publication, once the final corrections have been made, and make them immediately available in Open Access through the repository.
Advantages: Immediate Open Access
Disadvantages: many journals do not permit immediate Open Access, thus this type of policy constrains the choice of journals in which an author can publish

Type 2: Later deposit, after the embargo period

This type of policy requires authors to deposit their articles after publication, and at the end of the publisher’s embargo period.
Advantages: Complies with publisher requirements
Disadvantages: delays Open Access; runs the risk of the author forgetting to deposit the article since it is so long after publication

Type 3: Immediate deposit with optional later access

This type of policy complies with publisher embargoes but it concomitantly ensures that all the required research outputs are gathered into the repository at the earliest possible point, that is, when the article has been accepted for publication and is in its final form. The policy requires immediate deposit but if it is submitted to a journal with an embargo then the policy permits access to be opened only at the end of the embargo period. During that period, however, the article’s metadata (title, authors, affiliation, abstract, references) should be fully Open Access at all times (publisher embargoes cannot be applied to metadata, which are not copyrighted).

The repository software usually has a field which asks whether the article is to be embargoed and for how long, and then automatically opens the article at the end of the embargo period. The software also has an ‘eprint request’ button for each article: when the full-text is under an embargo, would-be readers simply click on this button and an email request is sent to the corresponding author to ask for a copy by email. This is a ‘fair use’ or ‘fair dealing’ fulfilment of a personal request from an interested would-be user. It effectively makes the article available to users even through an embargo period, as a result disseminating the findings and increasing the impact that the article can have.

Most new institutional and funder policies are of this type. The policy from the Istituto Superiore Sanita in Italy is an example. An optimal wording for this type of policy, which can be used as the basis for any institutional policy, is here.

 

Further information

The Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) mandate: rationale and model 

Optimizing OA self-archiving mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?

How to integrate university and funder Open Access mandates

Which green OA mandate is optimal?

 

Reference

Sale, A (2007) The Patchwork Mandate.  D-Lib Magazine, 13 (1/2) January-February. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january07/sale/01sale.html