Green Open Access
What is Green Open Access?
Green Open Access is also known as Self Archiving, or simply as sharing. It is a way to provide access to your research without cost to you or your readers.
How does it work?
You upload a copy of your work to a repository, which hosts it online where your readers can find and download it. Most publishers have imposed rules on this process, and only allow you to upload your Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM), also known as the Post-Print. This is the final draft of the work after changes from peer review have been added, but before the publisher has added any typesetting, layout, logos etc.
Most publishers only allow you to post an article if you place it under an embargo, preventing access until after a certain period. This is often 6 months from the date of publication for Medical papers, 12 months for Science and Technology and 24 months for Arts and Social Sciences. You can see what embargo your publisher requires by searching the Sherpa/Romeo database.
Types of Repository
Institutional Repositories
Institutional Repositories host papers from researchers at a specific institution, such as a university. The University of Bristol's Institutional Repository is called Explore Bristol Research and research outputs can be uploaded to it through Pure.
Research outputs uploaded to Pure will become available on Explore Bristol Research. The library's Open Access Team will check the publisher's policy for any full text file you upload, so that you can be sure that you are meeting your publisher's requirements. Sometimes this will mean they set up an embargo period for access to the file. In rare cases it may not be possible to make the manuscript you provide available, often due to publisher restrictions on the type of file they'll allow you to make available. In these situations the Open Access Team will contact you and explain your options.
Please upload the Author's Accepted Manuscript for all your journal articles and all conference papers that are published in formal proceedings. The next page of this training will explain how to use Pure to do this.
Subject Repositories
Subject repositories host papers from a specific subject. For example, arXiv.org focusses on science and technology, bioRxiv.org focusses on biology, MedRxiv on Health Sciences and PubMed Central on Biomedicine.
These sites usually do not check that what you are uploading is in line with your publisher's policies, so it's up to you to ensure that what you are doing is permitted.
Some subject repositories such as arXiv allow pre-prints to be uploaded. Pre-prints are earlier drafts of a work, uploaded before submission to a journal. This can be an important step in the communication of your research, however, it is important to remember to update the record with the Author's Accepted Manuscript once you have it.
Academic Social Networks
Academic social networks such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu are not appropriate venues for Open Access. They only make their papers available to people who have signed up to their site.
They will not check that what you have uploaded is in line with your publisher's policies and will often encourage you to upload versions of your work that your publisher does not allow you to upload.
Academic social networks do not meet the requirements of the Open Access polices you will have to comply with. It is better to upload to your institutional repository instead.