Open Access support services at SULB

• Legal questions (copyright, self-archiving and reuse permissions)
• Requesting post-publication permission to publish material (particularly books) as an open access resource
• The open access policies adopted by research funding bodies
• Publishing in open access journals
• Predatory publishing
• Publishing books and journals in universaar (Saarland University Press)
• Using Creative Commons licences

Self-archiving service

Another service offered by SULB is to examine the copyright issues associated with journal articles already published in subscription-based journals with the aim of making these articles available as Open Access resources.

As an author, you can

• upload to SciDok the final (post-review) version of your article, which in terms of content is identical to the edited and typeset article published in the journal, as document type "Journal article/ magazine article",

or you can

• upload your original version (i.e. the unrefereed pre-print) that you submitted to the journal, which is not identical to the version published in the journal to SciDok as document type "Other".

In exceptional cases, such as articles in journals published by De Gruyter, authors are permitted to self-archive the final version of the article as published.

After uploading the article, you will be sent an automatic message asking you to confirm by email that you have the right to publish the material on SciDok.

The SULB will then check the open access policy of the journal or publisher to confirm that the publisher permits OA publication, and, when necessary, will negotiate with the publisher accordingly. Once permission has been granted or confirmed, publication and copyright notes will be appended to the author’s version uploaded to SciDok and the article will then be published in SciDok.

In some cases, the publisher may impose an embargo period that will need to expire before the self-archived version of the article can be published in an open access repository. As the author of the article, you will also be notified about other publishing options, such as placing the article on your personal website, on other open access servers or in author networks.