Responsible sharing
Share your publications responsibly
If you are doing research, no doubt you also want to share the research results and publications with a wider audience. By sharing, you increase your visibility in your field, which can potentially help your research get more cited, strengthen your reputation, and advance your research and you in your career. You also make your research output available to other researchers in the field. Sharing is, thus, an important part of carrying out research and it is worthwhile doing it responsibly. An essential part of responsible sharing is knowing what, where, and how you can share your publications.
Before you post your article anywhere, you should look for a few things:
- Does the publication agreement state that scholarly sharing is allowed, also in social media?
- Which version of the paper does it allow?
- Pre-print (before peer review)
- Final draft (i.e., post-print, author’s final manuscript after peer review but before publisher copyediting)
- Publisher’s final version (the file you see on the publisher platform)
- Where can the publication be shared—author’s personal website, departmental website, or institutional repository? Non-commercial site only?
- Is there a waiting period (embargo) before the publication can be shared?
Open policy finder – tool for navigating journal’s open access policies
Open policy finder by Jisc (formerly Sherpa Romeo) is an online resource that aggregates and presents academic publishers’ and journals’ open access policies from around the world. All registered publishers or journals held in Open policy finder are reviewed and analysed resulting in summaries of self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given to authors on a journal-by-journal basis where possible.
The policy information provided through the open policy finder service primarily aims to serve the academic research community. Since the service launched over 15 years ago, publisher policies and the open access sector have changed a great deal. Open access policies can be complex and vary according to geographical location, the institution, and the various routes to open access — all of which affect how and where you can publish your research. To secure responsible sharing, as an author you must always check the policies of the publisher.
How to share?
Always check from the publication agreement or publisher website, or use Open policy finder to make sure what, where, and how you can share your publications.
Usually, sharing the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) links is an easy and responsible way to share. A DOI link is subject to share with anyone, on any platform and via any communication channel. However, full texts may not be accessible to everyone through DOI links if the publication is not open access.
Publishers may allow you to share some version of your article e.g. on preprint or publication repositories, or on your personal or institutional website. Social academic platforms like ResearchGate and Academia.edu may bring great visibility for your work but before sharing in these forums ensure compliance with the publisher’s sharing policies because many publishers are opposed to sharing on commercial platforms.
You may usually share your own publications privately, such as with individual colleagues via email for their scholarly or research use. You may also use your publications for classroom teaching and internal training at your organisation and include your publications for grant funding or patent application purposes.
If a publication displays a Creative Commons license or other open access label, you can share according to the end user license. Here are some typical examples:
- CC BY licensed articles may be shared with anyone, on any platform and via any communication channel. You must give appropriate credit to the authors. This is the most commonly used license in publications.
- CC BY NC ND licensed articles may be shared on non-commercial platforms in unadapted form only. Again, acknowledge the authors.
Remember:
- Sharing your research outputs is an important part of doing research, and it is worth doing responsibly.
- Always check what you can share and where.