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Open Access Publishing

This guide highlights open access publishing for AUB affiliates as well as self-archiving at AUB. It also provides information and resources on author's rights, open access publishing, what to do before publishing plus some venues

"A preprint, also known as the Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM), is the version of your article before you have submitted it to a journal for peer review." from Taylor and Francis.

"A preprint is a version of a scientific manuscript posted on a public server prior to formal peer review. As soon as it’s posted, your preprint becomes a permanent part of the scientific record, citable with its own unique DOI." from PLOS.

"A preprint is defined as a draft, or version, of a paper that is posted on a preprint server and which has not yet been peer reviewed for formal publication. By definition, a preprint intends to disseminate research before acceptance and publication in a journal." from European Chemical Society Publishing.

"A preprint is a paper that is made available publicly via a community preprint server prior to (or simultaneous with) submission to a journal." from Wiley. 

"A preprint is a piece of research that has not yet been peer reviewed and published in a journal. In most cases, they can be considered final drafts or working papers." from Preprints.org

What are Preprints?

What are preprints? from iBiology on YouTube

Preprints from University of Melbourne Library on Vimeo.

 

What is Self-Archiving?

As part of the publishing process, authors may transfer part or all of their rights to the publisher. Before transferring copyright, authors should read and understand the copyright agreements they sign with publishers. They should also consider including an addendum to ensure certain rights to reuse and share their work. Click here to learn more about Author Rights.

Different Journals and publishers have different policies on what version of the author research (pre-print, post-print or published) can be posted in a repository. More about publisher policies on self-archiving can be found in SHERPA/RoMEO

AUB academic researchers are encouraged to deposit research-oriented publications in AUB ScholarWorks (Institutional Repository at AUB). Click here to learn more about Self-Archiving at AUB

Research articles can be published before being peer reviewed and many publishers allow preprint posting of documents submitted for publication. Always check your publisher's preprint policies prior to deposit or submit your preprint. Publishers preprint policies are usually found on the publisher website and/or can be found in SHERPA/RoMEO: A database of journal publisher policies on self-archiving, pre-printing, post-printing, and author rights. 

Sample preprint policies from the publisher website:

Use the following databases to check the journal or publisher policies on preprint: 

For more refer to this List of academic publishers by preprint policy

Majority of preprint are published in preprint servers. Preprint servers can be multidisciplinary or discipline specific. The best place to share your preprint might be a discipline specific preprint server. Make sure to check publisher policy before depositing a preprint in any of these servers. 

List of preprint servers: policies and practices across platforms

Here is a list of the most popular servers:  

I. Discipline-specific preprint servers 
II. Multidisciplinary / Aggregator of preprint servers