Author assistance for self-archiving, publishing versions and permissions
Self-archiving is another way to refer to the process of deposit: by submitting your work into a digital repository you are ensuring both preservation and dissemination of the work. UM has several repositories; MSpace is the scholarly works repository and its purpose to showcase UM’s academic contributions in its many forms by making it publicly, and freely accessible to anyone in the world while also meeting policy mandates.
Points when depositing
- When a work is deposited, the author is granting permission under the distribution license of the repository. UM repositories do not assign Creative Commons (CC) licenses to works that are deposited.
- Depositing does not change the copyright ownership of the work, regardless of whether it is you or the publisher. It is incumbent on the depositor to ensure they have agreement from any co-authors to make the deposit as well as the right (see next point).
- If the deposit is a previously published work from a commercial publisher, unless the author has arranged to retain all rights, then the publisher has asked you as author to transfer some or all your copyright to them. This is done via a contract called a publication agreement or a copyright transfer agreement. See also UML Author Rights services.
- Publishers’ policies vary between publishers and also within a publisher, there may be different policies for different versions of the work. Become familiar with these versions (see next point) and if you are unclear, be sure to ask your publisher during the process of publication.
- There are 3 publication versions (also known as Versions of Record):
Pre-print: usually the author’s originally submitted work, prior to peer review and publication
Post-print: the final manuscript form prior to formatting and copy-editing publication production. This version contains all revisions made during the peer-review process. This is the version that complies with the Tri-Agency self-archiving mandate; when depositing this version indicate ‘preprint’ in the Resource Type field.
Published: the final version of the work produced by the publisher. This will have copy-editing, formatting (e.g. masthead, layout) and some kind of persistent identifier assigned to it (i.e. digital object identifier).