University Presses Behind Commercial Presses on Self-Archiving Policy

From: Ted Bergstrom <tedb_at_econ.ucsb.edu>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 02:08:05 +0000

The University of California is setting up a postprint series which is
intended to house published papers written by all scholars in the UC
system. In helping to set this up for my own department, I have been
looking into the permissions policies of a number of publishers that
publish in economics. I have found that the stated policies of the
university presses, as recorded by Sherpa, are among the least
permissive. There is one shining exception, Cambridge University Press.

I wonder if the publishers have really thought these policies through.
At the very least, one would think that they would allow posting of
papers with a lag (MIT Press does so with a one-year lag) since most of
their journals are made available on JSTOR with about a three year
moving wall. Can anyone suggest good ways to persuade some of these
publishers to move toward more liberal policies?

University Presses Preprints Postprints Publisher's PDF
Cambridge Yes Yes Yes
Oxford Yes No No
Chicago No No No
MIT No After 1 year After 1 year
California No No No
American Econ Asn Yes * Yes* ??

*According to Sherpa, the American Economic Association does not permit
posting of preprints or postprints. I contacted the AEA officialdom
and was told that this is a misreading of the AEA's policy toward
author posting. They do not object to authors' posting their own papers.
Supposedly, the AEA is in the process of working out an explicit statement
that will allow authors to post preprints, and postprints, including,
I hope, publishers' pdf files.

Below, I list the policies of commercial publishers with a significant
presence in economics. Blackwell, which publishes many society-owned
journals in economics as well as some of its own, deserves special
mention for allowing posting of preprints and postprints including pdf's

Other Presses Preprints Postprints Publishers' pdfs
Springer-Kluwer Yes Yes No
Elsevier Yes Yes No
Blackwell Yes Yes Yes
Taylor-Francis Yes No No
Received on Sat Dec 11 2004 - 02:08:05 GMT