Open access publishing and self-archiving: Self-archiving

Self-archiving means depositing a copy of a publication in a subject-specific or institutional repository, where it is openly available to everyone either immediately or after an embargo period. The University of Oulu requires that the publications of researchers are deposited into the open access repository OuluREPO according to the terms and conditions of the publisher.

Benefits of self-archiving:

• The publication gets a persistent address (URN) and its long-term preservation is guaranteed
• Improves the visibility and availability of research 
• The publication is easier to find through search engines
• The library takes care of ensuring compliance with the publisher's terms and conditions
• Self-archiving is a free-of-charge method of making your research openly accessible
• Major research funders require or recommend open access publishing in the projects they fund
• Making the publication open access also impacts the funding of the university: peer-reviewed, scientific publications receive a funding incentive factor of 1.2 from the Ministry of Education and Culture if they are published open access or self-archived

How do I self-archive my publication?

• Log in to the OuluCRIS research information system and check if your publication has been self-archived
• If the publication has not been published open access or self-archived, add a suitable version of your publication for self-archiving (usually accepted manuscript/final draft)
• Articles published under a Creative Commons license do not need the publisher's permission for self-archiving
• The library enters the publication into the OuluREPO repository according to the publisher’s terms and conditions for self-archiving

Embargo period set by the publisher

• If the publisher requires an embargo period for the self-archived version, at first only the bibliographic information of the publication is entered into the publication repository. The actual self-archived PDF will only become available once the embargo has ended.
• You can enter your publication information into OuluCRIS immediately after publication, even if it is under embargo
• The library will check the conditions set by the publisher before publishing the self-archived version
• You can explore publisher policies through the Open Policy Finder service or on the journals' own websites.

Free access is not the same as open access

Publications may be temporarily made openly accessible on the publisher’s website, for example, for marketing purposes. In such cases, the articles may be labeled as “free” or “free access”. However, free articles are not the same as open access articles. Free access does not guarantee permanent openness and does not meet the criteria for open access publishing.

In most cases, self-archiving of the final published version is not permitted for free articles. Instead, only the accepted manuscript version is typically permitted for self-archiving.