Penn State's open access policy, AC02, asks for “an electronic copy of the Author’s accepted manuscript … in an appropriate format (such as PDF).”

The “accepted manuscript” is the last version of the article that the author(s) edit prior to publication. It includes all changes made during the peer review process. It is not the final published version — for example, it does not include the publisher’s formatting and page numbers. It is also not the formatted "proof" that some journals send for the author's review. In most fields, accepted manuscripts are created with a word processing program such as Microsoft Word. They can be word processing documents or PDFs, but their formatting comes from a word processing program.

In fields where researchers use LaTeX to prepare papers for publication, the accepted manuscript may look very similar to the final published version, due to being typeset in LaTeX using the journal's LaTeX template. This is fine. It's still the accepted manuscript.

In some cases, you may have retained the right to deposit the final version of the article (including page numbers) in an open access repository. In that case, the Libraries welcome you to deposit the final version in lieu of the accepted manuscript. This will still satisfy AC02.

With questions about the open access policy, please contact the Libraries' Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright.