Self-archiving involves depositing a free copy of a digital document on the World Wide Web in order to provide open access to it. The term usually refers to the self-archiving of peer reviewed research journal and conference articles as well as theses, deposited in the author's own institutional repository or open archive for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact.
Self-archiving is one of two general methods for providing open access. The other is open access publishing in an open access journal. The former is sometimes called the "green" and the latter the "golden" road to open access.
Self-archiving was first explicitly proposed as a universal practice by Stevan Harnad in his 1994 posting "Subversive Proposal", although computer scientists had been doing it spontaneously in anonymous FTP archives since at least the 1980s (see CiteSeer) and physicists since the early 1990s on the web (see arXiv).
About 91% of peer-reviewed journals surveyed by eprints already endorse authors self-archiving preprint and/or postprint versions of their papers [1]. Whereas the right to self-archive postprints is a copyright matter, the right to self-archive preprints is merely a question of journal policy.
Self Archiving FAQ: Answers to most of the questions you might have about self-archiving. There is also a Glossary of Terms in case you find yourself wading in jargon.
Berners-Lee, T., De Roure, D., Harnad, S. and Shadbolt, N. (2005) Journal publishing and author self-archiving: Peaceful Co-Existence and Fruitful Collaboration. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/
Hajjem, C., Harnad, S. and Gingras, Y. (2005) Ten-Year Cross-Disciplinary Comparison of the Growth of Open Access and How it Increases Research Citation Impact. IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin 28(4) pp. 39-47. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11688/
Harnad, Stevan (1991). "Post-Gutenberg Galaxy: The Fourth Revolution in the Means of Production of Knowledge." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 2, no. 1: 39-53. http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v2/n1/harnad.2n1
--- 1996. "Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals." In Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier, edited by Robin P. Peek and Gregory B. Newby, 103-118. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,. http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00001692/00/harnad96.peer.review.html
--- (2001/3). For Whom the Gate Tolls? Open Access to Peer-Reviewed Research Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving: Maximizing Research Impact by Maximizing Online Access. In: Law, Derek & Judith Andrews, Eds. Digital Libraries: Policy Planning and Practice. Ashgate Publishing 2003. http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/39/index.html
--- (2003). "The Research-Impact Cycle." Information Services & Use 23, no. 2-3: 139-142.
--- (2003). "Self-Archive Unto Others as Ye Would Have Them Self-Archive Unto You." JCOM: Journal of Science Communication 2, no. 3. http://jcom.sissa.it/focus/foc020303.html
--- (2003). Online Archives for Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications. International Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. John Feather & Paul Sturges (eds). Routledge. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archives.htm
--- (2006) Maximizing Research Impact Through Institutional and National Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandates. In Proceedings of CRIS2006. Current Research Information Systems: Open Access Institutional Repositories (in press), Bergen, Norway. Jeffrey, K., Eds. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12093/
--- (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 8. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/
Harnad, Stevan, Les Carr, and Tim Brody. "How and Why to Free All Refereed Research from Access- and Impact-Barriers Online, Now." High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine, no. 4 (2001). http://library.cern.ch/HEPLW/4/papers/1/
Harnad, Stevan, and Matt Hemus. "All or None: No Stable Hybrid or Half-Way Solutions for Launching the Learned Periodical Literature into the Post-Gutenberg Galaxy." In The Impact of Electronic Publishing on the Academic Community: An International Workshop Organized by the Academia Europaea and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, dited by I. Butterworth. London: Portland Press, 1998. http://www.portlandpress.com/pp/books/online/tiepac/session1/ch5.htm
Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Ariadne-RAE.htm
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/impact.html
Sale, Arthur (2006) Researchers and institutional repositories, in Jacobs, Neil, Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 9, pages 87-100. Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Limited. http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000257/
Shadbolt, N., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2006) The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 21. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12453/
Swan, A. (2006) Overview of scholarly communication, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 1. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12427/
Swan, A. (2006) The culture of Open Access: researchers’ views and responses, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 7. Chandos. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12428/
Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, External Collaborators, Key Perspectives Inc. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/
Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O’Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005) Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education. Learned Publishing 18(1) pp. 25-40. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/
Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O’Brien, A., Hardy, R. and Rowland, F. (2005) Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints and Open Access Journals within Further and Higher Education. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11001/
