Accessibility and self-archiving of conference articles: A study on a selection of Swedish institutional repositories

The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OAand publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50% of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles “without a home”. Between 20–25% of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants’ own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the selfarchiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences’ copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving. To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of recommendations are suggeste

Accessibility and Self Archiving of Conference Articles: A Study on a Selection of Swedish Institutional Repositories

Abstract. The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA-and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50 % of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles "without a home". Between 20-25 % of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants' own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to selfarchiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences' copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving

Accessibility and Self Archiving of Conference Articles: A Study on a Selection of Swedish Institutional Repositories*

Abstract. The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA-and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50 % of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles "without a home". Between 20-25 % of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants' own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to selfarchiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences' copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving. To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of recommendations are suggested

Parallellpublicering av konferensartiklar : principer, tillämpningar och tillgänglighet i svenska publiceringsdatabaser

Projektets huvudsyfte har varit att undersöka kvalitetsgranskade konferensartiklars tillgänglighet samt konferensers OA- och publiceringspolicies för att på så sätt klarlägga olika aspekter vad det gäller parallellpublicering i svenska publiceringsdatabaser. För ändamålet har projektdeltagarna undersökt ett urval konferenser och konferensartiklar via sina publiceringsdatabaser under ett specifikt tidsintervall och beskrivit dem utifrån ett gemensamt schema. Undersökningen har visat att publiceringsdatabaserna fyller en viktig funktion för att synliggöra konferenspublikationer. Vi har funnit att minst ca. 50 % av konferensartiklarna kan publiceras som post-prints i våra publiceringsdatabaser. Därför är det av stor vikt att fortsätta arbetet med att utnyttja de lokala publiceringsdatabaserna som publiceringskanal och att inte bara använda dem som ett verktyg för parallellpublicering och primärpublicerat material, som avhandlingar och rapporter, utan även som en källa framförallt för konferensartiklar ”utan hem”, som vi nu vet utgör en stor del av vårt undersökningsmaterial (ca. 15 %).  Mellan 20-25 % av de undersökta artiklarna fanns i något slags öppet OA-arkiv; ca. hälften av dessa fanns i någon av projektdeltagarnas egen publiceringsdatabas. Detta talar för att den egna publiceringsdatabasen är en viktig faktor för öppen tillgänglighet. Ca. 10% av konferenserna i studien hade en uttrycklig OA-policy eller gav uttryck för en sådan genom att öppet tillgängliggöra konferensartiklar på sina konferenssajter. Ett stort problem när det gäller parallellpublicering av konferensartiklar är just bristen på information om OA-policy. Konferenspubliceringslandskapet är komplicerat och parallellpubliceringen av dokument härifrån är mycket tidskrävande. Vi skulle framför allt önska en liknande policy-resurs som SHERPA/RoMEO för konferenser. Men för närvarande finns inget annat alternativ än att lusläsa konferensernas upphovsrättsinformation till författarna och av denna försöka dra slutsatser om ev. parallellpublicering. För att underlätta framtida hantering och klassificering av konferensartiklar i svenska publiceringsdatabaser, framför allt med tanke på ev. framtida nationella bibliometriska analyser via SwePub, föreslås ett antal rekommendationer.Projektrapport till Kungl. biblioteket, Programmet för OpenAccess.se, 2011-201

Accessibility and Self Archiving of Conference Articles : A Study on a Selection of Swedish Institutional Repositories

The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA- and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50 % of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles “without a home”. Between 20-25 % of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants’ own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences’ copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving

Accessibility and Self Archiving of Conference Articles : A Study on a Selection of Swedish Institutional Repositories

The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA- and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50 % of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles “without a home”. Between 20-25 % of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants’ own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences’ copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving