SHERPA's RoMEO Service Tops 500 Publisher Self-Archiving Policies

SHERPA's RoMEO Service now includes over 500 publisher self-archiving policies

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

If an academic author wants to put their research articles on-line, they are faced with an increasingly complex situation. Evidence shows that citations to articles made openly accessible in this way are taken up and cited more often than research that is simply published in journals. Also some funding agencies require open access archiving for their research, to increase the use of the information generated.

However, some publishers prohibit authors from using their own articles in this way. Others allow it, but only under certain conditions, while others are quite happy for authors to show their work in this way.

Authors can be left confused: RoMEO helps to clarify the situation . . . .

The RoMEO service, provided by the award winning SHERPA Partnership*, uses a simple colour-code to classify policies and inform authors of what can be done with their articles, and offers users the ability to:

  • View summaries of publishers' copyright policies in relation to self-archiving
  • View if publisher policies comply with funding regulations, as some publishers are too restrictive and cannot be used to publish funded research
  • To search journal and publisher information by Journal Title, Publisher Name and ISSN

Additional RoMEO provides lists of

  • Publishers that allow the use of their PDFs in Institutional Repositories
  • Publisher with Paid Options

RoMEO is seen as an essential resource by many in the Open Access community. RoMEO is funded by JISC and the Wellcome Trust. Journal information is kindly provided by the British Library's Zetoc service hosted by MIMAS