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Open Access

A guide for students, faculty, & researchers at Saint Mary's University

Adding Your Publications to Saint Mary's University Open Access Repository

We would love to have your work in the Saint Mary's University open access institutional repository! Adding your work to the Saint Mary's University open access institutional repository can greatly enhance the visibility of your scholarship. Google Scholar indexes repository content further allowing discoverability of your research. Certain publishers and copyright holders allow their work to be included in open access repositories. Self archiving policies for journals can be found in the Sherpa/Romeo database.

If you are interested in adding your content to the open access Institutional Repository, contact the Copyright Office at copyright@smu.ca for more information.

Publishing Discounts

Determining Open Access

Funders' & Publishers' Policies

Sherpa Juliet logo.

Sherpa/Romeo logo.

Are you a Tri-Agency Grant Recipient?

The Tri-Agency's (Canadian Institutes of Health Research CIHR, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada NSERC, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada SSHRC) Open Access Policy on Publications stipulates that grant recipients are required to ensure that any peer-reviewed journal publications arising from Agency-supported research are freely accessible within 12 months of publication.

 

Recipients can do this through one of the following routes:

 

Green Route - Online Repositories

Deposit your article in an online repository. Saint Mary's University Institutional Repository fulfills this requirement. Alternatively, scholars are permitted to deposit material into a subject based disciplinary repository. The Tri-Agency recommends that scholars search OpenDOAR to determine if a site qualifies as an open access repository.

 

OR

Gold Route - Journals

Publish in a journal that allows for immediate open access to the article. Many journals charge a fee to authors to make the article open access. This fee is called an author processing fee and can be claimed as part of your application for funding.

It's the responsibility of the grant recipient to determine which publishers allow authors to archive journal publications in accordance with funding agency policies. You can check the open access restrictions of many journals using Sherpa-Romeo. 

 

Author Rights & Addendum

As an author you may have the option to retain your rights when you publish. It is important to be aware of the benefits of retaining some control over your work. Listed below are some key points:

  • As the author, you are the copyright holder unless and until you transfer the copyright to someone else in a signed agreement.
  • Normally, the copyright holder possesses the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and modification of the original work.
  • An author who has transferred copyright without retaining their rights must ask permission to re-use the work – unless the use is one of the statutory exemptions (e.g. fair dealing, educational exception) provided in copyright law.
  • The copyright holder has ultimate control over a work. Decisions concerning use of the work (such as distribution, access, pricing, updates, and any use restrictions) are solely the responsibility of the copyright holder.
  • Authors who have transferred their copyright without retaining any rights may not be able to place the work on course Web sites, deposit the work in a public digital repository, or reuse portions in a subsequent work.

Author Addendum

While traditional publishing agreements often require that authors grant exclusive rights to the publisher, authors are increasingly negotiating to retain some of their rights when agreeing to publish their work.

The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument authors can use to modify their copyright transfer agreements with non-open access journal publishers. It enables authors to secure a more balanced agreement by retaining select rights, such as the rights to reproduce, reuse, and publicly present the articles they publish for non-commercial purposes.It allows you to select which individual rights out of the bundle of copyrights you want to keep, such as:

  • Distributing copies in the course of teaching and research
  • Posting the article on a personal or institutional website
  • Creating derivative works

Adapted from CARL Information for Authors