Re: SHERPA will take over the Romeo Publisher Policy Table

From: Bill Hubbard <Bill.Hubbard_at_nottingham.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 14:02:13 +0100

    [Moderator's Note: Below are two postings: (1) B. Hubbard
    (2) S. Arunachalam. My own comments on the redesigning of
    SHERPA/Romeo will follow in the next posting.]

    Prior Amsci Topic Thread:

    "SHERPA will take over the Romeo Publisher Policy Table"ALPSPready Green
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3100.html

(1) Bill Hubbard

Dear Colleagues,

This is to alert you to the new version of the RoMEO list of publisher's
Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs), which is being hosted by the
SHERPA project.
see: www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

Two principles have guided the redesign:

* The primary user-group of the list are those people who are
archiving material and want to know details of the copyright transfer
required by a publisher for the purposes of archiving an article.

* The list attempts to clarify what conditions and rights form part
of a publisher's CTA and so part of a contract between author and
publisher.

It might interest list members to know some of the changes that we have
made to the original RoMEO list - a summary follows:

* Changed from a scrolling list to a database solution.

* Created the ability to search for a publisher.

* A link to the publisher's home page has been provided from their
name.

* There is an on-line suggestion form for users to contribute
corrections, updates and changes.

* There is a similar on-line form for users to suggest new
publishers.

* The award and use of colours has been maintained, as colours have
proved to be a useful "shorthand" in writing and in conversation about
the general type of rights assigned or retained with the CTA of a
publisher.

* The original RoMEO colour-categories have been amended. The
original list categorised a publisher as "blue" if pre-print archiving
rights *or* if post-print archiving rights were permitted.

We have removed this ambiguity by categorising pre-print "friendly"
publishers as "yellow" and post-print "friendly" publishers as "blue".

A publisher allowing both pre- and post-print archiving rights to be
retained or assigned is is then made "green", as in the original RoMEO
listing.

* There are four main possible publisher policies and these are all
materially different in terms of what can or cannot be self-archived.

    It is important we distinguish between each of them.

The publisher might allow posting of pre-prints only - "yellow"
The publisher might allow posting of post-prints only - "blue"
The publisher might allow posting of both pre-and post-prints - "green"
The publisher might allow none of the above - "white"

* Clicking a colour in the colour-key shows the list of publishers in
that category - all green publishers, or all white puiblishers, etc

* Ticks, crosses and question marks have been used to give a clear
summary on the rights granted as part of each publisher's CTA.

* Conditions have been separated into different lines for clarity and
categorised into "standard" conditions where possible.

* Note that the conditions given reflect those laid out in each
publisher's CTA. Some of these conditions are ambiguous or unclear.

However, since these form part of a contract between the author and the
publisher, these are listed as they stand. Authors may wish to
negotiate exemptions or clarify interpretations before they put their
name to documents with ambiguous terms. Advocates within an institution
with a knowledge of their institutional policies might be of assistance
to authors in interpretation of some of these ambiguous conditions.

* In response to user-feedback, as in the original RoMEO list,
statistics are available on the different colour-categories of each
publisher. Note, however, that these statistics relate to only those
publishers held by the list and the basis for comparison will change:
for example, when further publishers are added at the suggestion of the
user community.

I hope that the archiving community finds the list useful.

Bill Hubbard, SHERPA Project Manager www.sherpa.ac.uk

----
(2) Subbiah Arunachalam:
Friends:
"The Southampton group is negotiating with the SHERPA/Romeo Project with
a view to doing exactly what Arun is suggesting!" says Stevan Harnad. I
earnestly request people managing SHERPA and Romeo project to release
such a list [of journals, rather than just publishers] in the public
domain immediately, and certainly before 2 May 2004 when our workshop
on Open Access will commence.
Subbiah Arunachalam
MS Swaminathan Institute, Chennai
Trustee, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
Received on Fri Apr 02 2004 - 14:02:13 BST

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