3.4 Support Tools and Services

Scholarly communications require clear understanding related to author rights and users’ rights in order to maximize benefits of publishing and knowledge diffusion. Particularly when authors are young researchers, they need regular institutional supports for rights management. In many universities and research institutions, librarians provide advisory service and guidance to budding authors while they deal with copyright and related rights during the course of their academic publishing. Some organizations associated with open access advocacy and awareness raising have developed certain ready-to-use tools for authors helping them to deal with rights management, particularly while they deal with copyright transfer before publishing in scholarly journals or conference proceedings, and self-archiving after publishing in journals or conferences.

SPARC Author’s Addendum

In earlier section you came to know that an author requires signing a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) for transferring a bundle of rights to publisher for publishing a paper in a scholarly journal or conference volume. This way, publisher also obtains a Licence to Publish (LTP) from the author, before publishing a paper in a scholarly journal. However, the author can retain some rights (e.g. rights to access, reuse, modify, share, etc.) and transfer only LTP to the  publisher. This would facilitate publishers in accepting contents for publishing, while authors would have freedom to reuse. The SPARC has developed a model agreement and a tool known as SPARC Author’s Addendum for facilitating authors to negotiate with publishers of scholarly journals. Author can carefully assess CTA given by a publisher and opt out some provisions in it restricting in exercising his/her academic freedom.

SHERPA/RoMEO

As Green Open Access model gives researchers avenues for self-archiving of their papers in institutional repositories, disciplinary repositories and personal research profiles, there is confusion in what form an author should self-archive a particular paper written by him/her. S/He needs to check whether in pre-print, post-print or publisher’s version s/he can self-archive. RoMEO is a necessary tool for a researcher for making a self-archiving decision. The RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher's copyright policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in open access repositories. This is a web-based database of about 22,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals, covering many print, electronic and open access journals available worldwide. This project is part of the SHERPA Services based at the University of Nottingham. This project is presently funded by JISC. It also received seed funding from the Wellcome Trust, UK. You can use RoMEO website for different purposes, such as:

  • Use RoMEO to assist you when depositing articles to your institutional repository.
    • Use RoMEO to find out if your publishers’ copyright rules allow you to deposit in your institutional repository.
    • RoMEO summarizes publishers’ conditions and categorizes publishers by colours, indicating level of author rights.
    • RoMEO shows which publishers’ comply with funding agencies’ conditions on open access.

    SHERPA/JULIET

    The SHERPA/JULIET is an excellent tool for helping global authors in identifying Research Funders' Open Access Policies. JULIET is searchable by funders' name or country keywords. The search results indicate whether researchers are required or not required to have open access publishing, open access archiving of publications and data archiving, while carrying out sponsored research projects. JULIET helps in comparing details of policies between different countries or different funding agencies, research councils and research bodies across the world. It also helps in determining open access mandates and publishing conditions of funding agencies. It also helps in identifying funders having provisions to pay APC for publishing open access scholarly articles. JULIET project is a part of the SHERPA Services based at the University of Nottingham. This project was initially funded by JISC and Research Libraries in the UK and Ireland (RLUK). You can use JULIET website for different purposes, such as:

    • Use JULIET to find out if your research funder requires you to deposit your article in a repository.
    • Use JULIET to assist you when depositing articles to your institutional repository.
    • JULIET provides summaries of funding agencies’ grant conditions on self-archiving on research publications and data.

    Last modified: Tuesday, 23 March 2021, 11:31 PM