Accessibility and self-archiving of conference articles: A study on a selection of Swedish institutional repositories
Author
Summary, in English
The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OAand
publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish
institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to
conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective
of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference
publications visible. We have found that ca. 50% of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional
repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great
importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as
dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles “without a home”. Between 20–25% of the
examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants’ own
institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important
factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy
by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of
conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the selfarchiving
of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences
similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences’ copyright
information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving.
To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of
recommendations are suggested
publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish
institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to
conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective
of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference
publications visible. We have found that ca. 50% of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional
repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great
importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as
dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles “without a home”. Between 20–25% of the
examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants’ own
institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important
factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy
by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of
conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the selfarchiving
of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences
similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences’ copyright
information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving.
To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of
recommendations are suggested
Department/s
Publishing year
2011
Language
English
Pages
259-269
Publication/Series
Information Services & Use
Volume
31
Full text
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
IOS Press
Topic
- Information Studies
Keywords
- Open Access
- conference articles
- institutional repositories
- self-archiving
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0167-5265