SHERPA Services Blog

RoMEO Updates for December

Added new publishers:

• American Folklore Society (Green) [8/12/11]
• Associação Portuguesa de Psicologia [Blue] [13/12/11]
• Commonwealth Forestry Association (white) [12/12/11]
• Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia [Blue] [13/12/11]
• Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência (White) [13/12/11]
• Norges geologiske undersøkelse [Green] [15/12/11]
• Politechniki Poznańskiej, Wydział Inżynierii Zarządzania [Blue] [7/12/11]
• Scorpion Files {Green} [15/12/11]
• Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina de Família e Comunidade [Blue] [2/12/11]
• Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, Centro de Filosofia [Blue] [13/12/11]

Provisional:

The new provosional status, will be used while entries are awaiting final confirmation from Publishers.

• Saratovskii Gosudarstvennyi Meditsinskii Universitet [14/12/11]
• Scorpion Files {Green} [15/12/11] – changed to provisional at request of Norsk RoMEO

Updated entries:

• American Association of Neurological Surgeons– policy URL [13/12/11]
• American Public Health Association – policy URL [13/12/11]
• Baywood Publishing – restrictions on access updated [14/12/11]
• Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian – policy Change (White to Green) Blimunda [13/12/11]
• International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) – Main URL [13/12/11]
• Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência Changed to Universidade de Lisboa, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência [13/12/11]
• OUP: Policy B – added 12 m embargo [8/12/11]
• Royal College of Psychiatrists – policy URL [13/12/11]
• Royal Meteorological Society – embargo period moved to apply to Published version only [13/12/11]
• SAGE-Hindawi – added statement noting end of partnership [13/12/11]
• Universidade de Coimbra, Centro de Estudos Sociais [7/12/11] Blimunda
• Universidade de Lisboa, Centro de Filosofia das Ciências to Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Centro de Filosofia das Ciências (to differentiate with new addition [13/12/11]
• Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia – Main URL [13/12/11]

Jane

SHERPA Services Offices Holiday Closure

The SHERPA Services Offices will be closed from the 23rd December 2011 until 2nd January 2012 inclusive. We will answer all enquiries upon our return.

All our services (RoMEO, JULIET and OpenDOAR) are expected to be running normally over the holiday period (Note: earlier post regarding OpenDOAR Content Search).

Please note that from 16th December, there will be reduced staffing due to staff annual leave.

Jane, Azhar & Peter

OpenDOAR Content Search

We are currently experiencing technical problems with OpenDOAR Content Search. This issue is under investigation, however due to staff annual leave this issue may not be resolved before Christmas.

RoMEO and JULIET Updates for November

RoMEO
Added new publishers:
•    Amsterdam University Press [18/11/11]
•    CETAC.MEDIA [9/11/11] – Blue
•    Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Africanos [9/11/11] – Blue
•    Oceanraise [8/11/11] – Green
•    Paleontological Society [8/11/11] – Yellow
•    Rapid Intellect – Blue [10/11/11]
•    Serbian Chemical Society [8/11/11] – Blue
•    Ubiquity Press – Green [18/11/11]
•    Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa [9/11/11]- White
•    Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Electrónica, Telecomunicações e Informática (DETI) – Blue [9/11/11]

Total publishers: 1040 [18/11/11]
Publishers allowing some form of self-archiving: 64%
Exceptions: 30 from 8 publishers

Updated entries:
Jane updated the following publisher entries:
•    American Society for Microbiology – policy URLs [7/7/11]
•    American Society of Clinical Oncology [29/11/11]
•    Annals of Family Medicine – policy URL [7/11/11]
•    Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Franceses  (APEF) – post-print allowed [7/11/11]
•    Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press – minor policy change [8/11/11]
•    Duke University Press – Open Depot link [7/7/11]
•    Duke University Press [18/11/11]
•    Endocrine Society – removed dud URL [7/11/11]
•    Finnish Zoological and Botanical Publishing Board [29/11/11]
•    Hegeler Institute – policy URL [7/11/11]
•    Journal of Social History, [29/11/11]
•    Landes Bioscience – policy URL [7/11/11]
•    NRC Press – Paid OA link [7/11/11]
•    Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas (ISCSP-UTL) – PDF allowed [7/11/11]

JULIET
Updates
•    British Heart Foundation – UKPMC URL [7/11/11]
•    Canadian Health Services Research Foundation – main URLs updated [7/11/11]
•    Dunhill Medical Trust – policy URL [7/11/11]
•    Telethon – policy URL [7/11/11]

Jane

60% of Journals Allow Immediate Archiving of Peer-Reviewed Articles – but it gets much much better…

The database improvements we made to SHERPA/RoMEO in August 2011 have enabled us to generate new statistics on the number of journals that permit self-archiving. We presented a provisional pie chart of journals broken down by RoMEO Colour at Open Repositories 2011. This is updated in the following chart, which uses a snapshot of the RoMEO Journals database taken on the 15th November 2011.

An alternative way of viewing this data is to look at how many of the versions of articles that academics prefer most can be archived, as in the following chart:

Like RoMEO Colours, this chart is based on strong open access, where there are no embargoes or restrictions that prevent immediate self-archiving. As with the colour chart, this shows that 60% of  journals allow the final peer-reviewed version of an article to be archived immediately, with a further 27% permitting the submitted version (pre-print) to be archived immediately.

Only 13% of journals do not allow immediate archiving, but moving away from the ideal of immediate open access, the situation changes once any embargo periods have expired. This is shown in the following chart:

This chart takes account of embargoes of any length. The most common embargo period is 12 months, followed by 6 months, and then 24 months. A few embargoes are longer, the maximum recorded in RoMEO now being 5 years.

Expiring embargos clearly improve the situation regarding archiving, but additional restrictions may still remain. For instance, it may be necessary to obtain permission to archive from the publisher, a fee might have to be paid, or archiving may only be available to authors whose work is paid for by certain specific funders. These restrictions may therefore make archiving impractical. However, if these restrictions can be complied with, the archiving situation improves still further, as shown in our final chart:

This chart shows that a remarkable 94% of journals allow archiving of peer-reviewed articles after any embargo period has expired and any addional restrictions have been complied with. Indeed, for nearly a quarter of journals, the publisher’s version/PDF itself can be archived. Just 1% of journals only permit the pre-peer review submitted version to be archived. This leaves only 5% of journals that do not permit self-archiving of some form or another.

On the date the data for these charts was compiled (15th Nov.2011), the RoMEO Journals database held about 19,000 titles. Unfortunately, assigning journals to policies is not an exact process, due to the vagueness of some publishers’ policies and the fact that some publishing houses do work for societies and other third parties whose own open access policies may take precedence. It is therefore difficult to gauge the precision of these figures, but we guestimate that they are accurate to within 2%. The charts do not take into account journals that are not covered by RoMEO’s own database, but we expect that the relative proportions would be similar.

Peter Millington

RoMEO and Special Exceptions

If you go to our Statistics page, you will notice a phrase like ‘RoMEO has 27 additional policies for special exceptions.’

So I thought I would explain what these special exceptions are.

Publishers may have a main policy on self-archiving, but some of their titles may follow another policy, this make them special exceptions. Previously, we have indicated these in the conditions section for each Publisher, as best we can.

Now…now we can enter them as their own policies, while still indicating the relationship to the parent publisher, and best of all, mapped to the correct titles.

You can still view the default title if you wish, and will see if there are Special Exceptions for that Publisher, listed in RoMEO, such as MIT Press.

As the quote above states, we have only processed 27 of these special exceptions so far, but we will be working on the rest that we have identified over the next few months.

We hope you’ll find this useful, and that it will make it easier for you to determine the correct policy for the titles you are searching for.

Jane, Azhar and Peter

RoMEO and JULIET Updates for October

RoMEO

New additions
•    Acta Didactica Norge- Blue [21/10/11]
•    Advanstar Communications [Blue] [7/10/11]
•    Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Franceses (APEF) – Blue [5/10/11]
•    Associazone Paolo Sylos Labini – Blue [26/10/11]
•    FORMakademisk [Blue] [17/10/11] – Norsk RoMEO
•    Gyldendal Akademisk (Gyldendal Academic) [Green] [17/10/11] – Norsk RoMEO
•    Instituto Politécnico de Leiria, Escola Superior de Artes e Design – Blue [5/10/11]
•    Norsk Ornitologisk Forening – Blue [21/10/11]
•    Ordem dos Médicos – (Blue) [5/10/1]
•    Presses de l’Ifpo – Yellow [21/10/11]
•    Radical Philosophy Group – WHITE [19/10/11]
•    Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências Veterinárias– (blue) [5/10/11]
•    Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain– WHITE [19/10/11]
•    Universidade de Aveiro, Centro de Investigação em Didáctica e Tecnologia na Formação de Formadores – Green [5/10/11]
•    Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Economia, Gestão e Engenharia Industrial – White [5/10/11]
•    Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Geociências – Blue [5/10/11]
•    Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Línguas e Culturas – (blue) [5/10/11]
•    Universidade de Coimbra, Centro de Estudos Sociais – White [5/10/11]
•    Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação – Blue [5/10/11]
•    Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas (ISCSP-UTL)

Updated entries:
•    American Society of Neuroradiology – policy URLS [5/10/11]
•    Bangladesh Society of Medicine – PDF use allowed [7/10/11]
•    Blackwell Publishing – OnlineOpen URL [5/10/11]
•    British Association of Hand Therapists (BAHT) [5/10/11] – OpenDepot link
•    Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE) – main URL [5/10/11]
•    Co-Action Publishing – [5/10/11] – OpenDepot link
•    College of Occupational Therapists – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Copernicus Publications [5/10/11] – OpenDepot link
•    Down Syndrome Education International – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Edinburgh University Press – PDF must be used
•    Endocrine Society – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Equinox Publishing – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Gyldendal Akademisk (Gyldendal Academic) – removed requirement to link to publisher version [24/10/11]
•    Histochemical Society – policy change, url change [5/10/11]
•    Institute of Physics – must link to publication added [12/10/11]
•    Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, Escola Superior de Educação – main URL [5/10/11]
•    Managed Care & Healthcare Communications – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Marine Biological Laboratory – policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Norsk Polarinstitutt –main and policy URL [5/10/11]
•    Norsk Psykologforening (Norwegian Psychological Association) [24/11/11]
•    NRC Research Press – policy URLS [5/10/11]
•    OpenJournals Publishing now called AOSIS OpenJournals [24/10/11]
•    Oxford University Press [5/10/11] – OpenDepot link
•    PhysMath Central- [5/10/11] – OpenDepot link
•    Public Library of Science [5/10/11] – policy URL
•    Royal College of Psychiatrists  [5/10/11] – policy URL
•    Royal Society of Medicine Press – policy URLs [5/10/11]
•    Skepsis – main URL [5/10/11]
•    Sociedade Portuguesa de Vida Selvagem [5/10/11] – policy change
•    Society for General Microbiology – policy URLs [5/10/11]
•    University of British Columbia, Okanagan – main URL [5/10/11]
•    Westburn Publishers – main and Policy URL [5/10/11]

JULIET
•    EPSRC [14/10/11]

Country Statistics for SHERPA/RoMEO

SHERPA Services is pleased to announce that it has added a ‘country’ field to its database of publishers’ copyright and self-archiving policies. This has enabled us to generate a statistical table of the number of RoMEO-listed publishers by country and continent:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics#countries

‘Country’ has also been added to the Advanced Search options for publishers:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/?mode=advanced

and as a query option for the Application Programmers’ Interface (API):

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/apimanual

The apparent imbalance in the distribution of RoMEO-listed publishers by country reflects two things:

1. It reflects the focus of RoMEO on the journals with the highest impact, as indicated by Thomson Reuters’ ‘Web of Knowledge’, which are mostly published in the United States and Europe.

2. The proportionately higher numbers for some countries, notably Portugal and Norway, reflect the effort that our partners in these countries have put into adding their country’s publishers to RoMEO.

We hope that users will find this extra information useful.

Peter Millington & Jane Smith

Access Keys Available for SHERPA/RoMEO API V.2.9

When we announced the new SHERPA/RoMEO API Version 2.9 at the end of August, we mentioned that we would be introducing API Access Keys. You can now register for API Keys, which offer the following benefits for V.2.9 users:

• Registered applications can exceed the limit of 500 requests per day.
• Registered users receive advance notice of planned changes to the API.
• API usage statistics for the key are available on request.

You can register for a free API Key at:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/apiregistry.php

It only takes a moment, and once you have received your key, you just add it to the API request as an argument, e.g.

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/api29.php?issn=0267-6672&ak=Iq83AIL5bss

where &ak=Iq83AIL5bss is the argument specifying the API key.

Should you need it, a presentation about the registration process is available at:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/RoMEO-API-Keys-2011-10-04.pdf

To convert an existing application to V.2.9, all you need to do is change the filename in the URL – e.g. from api24.php to api29.php – and add your API key. You may also then wish to modify your application further, perhaps at a later date, to exploit the new features of Version 2.9. These are documented at:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/apimanual.php

The main benefits of V.2.9 are the option to return separate permission data for the publisher’s version/PDF of articles, and the ability to return data in foreign languages.

Peter

RoMEO and JULIET Updates for September

RoMEO
New publishers:
• Actuarial Society of South Africa – Blue [8/9/11]
• Cancer Research UK [28/9/11] – White
• Council of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum – White [6/9/11]
• CSSALL Publishers– White [8/9/11]
• GERFLINT (White) [22/9/11]
• International Institute for Religious Freedom – Green – 6/9/11
• Mycotaxon – White [8/9/11]
• Radcliffe Medical Press (White) [23/9/11]
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Institut Mittag-Leffler – Blue [30/9/11]
• University of Arizona [30/9/11] – Green
• University of British Columbia Law Review Society – Green [16/9/11]

Total publishers: 1010 [30/9/11]
Total added in September: 10

Updated entries:

• American Academy of Pediatrics – Policy URL [1/9/11]
• American Dental Education Association – Policy Change, policy URL [1/9/11]
• American Podiatric Medical Association – Policy URL [2/9/11]
• American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science – Policy URL [1/9/11]
• American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers – Policy URL [1/9/11]
• Anton Melik Geographical Institute – removed defunct policy URL [1/9/11]
• Association for Global Business – Main URL [1/9/11]
• Athabasca University Press – individual exception added [8/9/11]
• British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery [22/9/11] – authors post-print now allowed
• English Folk Dance and Song Society – Policy URL [1/9/11]
• Entomological Society of Canada (La Société D’Entomologie du Canada) – removed duplicate statement [22/9/11]
• European Society of Endocrinology – Paid OA and Main URL [1/9/11]
• IGI Global – clarification of policy [23/9/11]
• Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology – Pre-print Policy [6/9/11]
• Karger – PDF use on fee paid [29/9/11]
• Monash University Press – main url [22/9/11]
• Nature Publishing Group – statement about paid options availability, extended to cover ‘several’ titles [23/9/11]
• Portland Press – 12m no longer applies [29/9/11]
• Royal Meteorological Society [23/9/11] – 3 year embargo and pre-print now allowed
• Society of Exploration Geophysicists – Main and Policy URL [1/9/11]
• SpringerOpen- Policy and Policy URL [2/9/11]
• UBC Press – clarification of statements [22/9/11]

JULIET
Policies Updated
• EPSRC policy [30/9/11]
• STFC Data Policy [30/9/11]

Jane