SRF - Self archiving policy

Introduction

Various research funders around the world, including the NIH in the USA and the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council in the UK, amongst others, have begun either to request or require that researchers they have funded deposit copies of the resulting articles on free-to-view online repositories (either institutional or otherwise), provided they have been accepted by a peer reviewed journal.

Reproduction supports the wide dissemination of the research it publishes. At the same time, most researchers in this discipline value the quality stamp and the ease of access that acceptance in the journal provides. These activities must be supported financially in some way; traditionally this has been by means of subscriptions by libraries to the journals, which also entitle institutions to online access.

The journal is also open to the possibilities offered by alternative business models, and continues to monitor experiments with the author-pays, free-to-reader model. It is now therefore launching an interim scheme to allow for the free online availability of papers whose funders require access to be made free sooner than the 12 months from official publication previously specified (see below). The transition period to any new model is, however, fraught with risks. For the time being, any self archiving or other depositing of accepted or published material must be done in a way that does not threaten the journal's financial viability. It is also important that the online hosting of the final version of record remains under the journal’s control, so that researchers can check any other versions available online against against the definitive version accepted for publication by the journal.

In order to balance these requirements, the journal has therefore arrived at the following policy. The journal will review this policy from time to time in the light of wider developments.

Statement of policy

The following options have been established to allow authors to comply with the Open Access policy of their research funding body or institution.

In the absence of payment, authors may self archive their accepted manuscript (prior to copy editing and page formatting) for public release after an embargo of six months after final publication, providing the conditions in section 1 below are adhered to.
You may pay the Free Access Fee (see Free Access Payment Authorization Form) to make the published article free immediately upon publication (see section 2 below).

1. Without payment of the Free Access Fee

If you are the author of an article that has been accepted for publication in Reproduction and you have not paid the Free Access Fee, you may not self archive or otherwise deposit your article on freely available institutional or other online repositories (including PubMed Central), unless:

The version deposited is the manuscript, as finally accepted by the journal but prior to copy editing and page formatting.

The authors ensure that it will not become freely available to the public until six months after final publication in the journal.

The manuscript made available in this way includes the disclaimer below:

“Disclaimer. This is not the definitive version of record of this article. This manuscript has been accepted for publication in Reproduction, but the version presented here has not yet been copy edited, formatted or proofed. Consequently, the journal accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions it may contain. The definitive version is available at [insert DOI link]. © [insert year of publication] Society for Reproduction and Fertility.”

The DOI link mentioned above will be provided by the publisher, BioScientifica Ltd, upon acceptance.

Acceptance of these stipulations is a condition of publication, and is now included in the assignment of copyright form.

2. Upon payment of the Free Access Fee

If your funding body or institution requires the article to be made freely available online at the earliest possible opportunity after final publication, you may pay the Free Access Fee (see Free Access Payment Authorization Form). The Free Access Fee is currently £2000 + VAT (UK pounds; VAT is sales tax set at 17.5%, and applies to all authors regardless of location). In return for this fee, Reproduction will:

Make the article freely available to all on the journal's website immediately upon official publication
Deposit the final published article on PubMed Central for public release immediately upon publication, so that authors need do nothing more to comply fully with the policies of funding bodies such as the Wellcome Trust
Permit unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, subject to the terms of the journal’s Re-use Licence.

You are not then bound by the conditions set out in section 1 above: you are free to post copies of the final published version on any online repositories or other websites as soon as you like.

In this case, please do not deposit your accepted manuscript (as opposed to the final published version) unless you also include the disclaimer at point (iii) above.