Whether you can deposit your scholarly article in an institutional repository and which version you can deposit depend on the agreement you (or your corresponding author) signed with your publisher prior to publication. The Sherpa Romeo database is a good starting point for figuring out your rights to deposit your article. You can search by journal name and see a summary of the journal's default rules related to "self-archiving" (the author's posting of the article online). The record also provides links to the publisher's webpages about self-archiving, so you can double-check the summary to ensure it is up-to-date.

When looking at Sherpa Romeo, look for the following details:

Article version

In most cases, you should deposit the accepted manuscript version.

Location

Look for information about depositing in an institutional repository or posting on an institutional website. The rules for these are often different from the rules for a personal website (where you may be able to share sooner) or a for-profit article sharing sites, such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu (where you may not be able to share at all).

License, if any

The license choice for articles deposited in ScholarSphere can vary by journal. By default, you should use "All rights reserved." However, some journals require authors to add one of the Creative Commons licenses when sharing the accepted manuscript.

Embargo, if any

If your publisher requires an embargo, you can set that in ScholarSphere, so that the article will automatically become available once that embargo expires.

Other requirements

The publisher may ask you to include other information along with the deposit. Even if the publisher doesn't require it, you should include the DOI and journal title to help people find your article.

To modify the default terms of your publishing agreement before signing it, consider using an author's addendum.

With questions, please contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright.