Accessibility and self-archiving of conference articles: A study on a selection of Swedish institutional repositories1

Abstract

Abstract. The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA-and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50 % of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles "without a home". Between 20-25 % of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants' own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to selfarchiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences' copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving. To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of recommendations are suggested.

The impact of institutional repositories: a systematic review

“…One justification for IRs comes from the Linde 2012 study, which reports that 25% of conference Journal of the Medical Library Association 108 (2) April 2020 jmla.mlanet.org proceedings examined were only found in the IR [19]. The inaccessibility of conference or meeting abstracts is a problem frequently confronting librarians and researchers, especially those who seek to include grey literature in systematic reviews.…”

“…Seven of the thirteen included studies focused on the increased exposure or discoverability that IRs provided for their content and their institutions [17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. This was measured in a variety of ways, including download statistics, webometric indicators (e.g., page views and internal links), and availability.…”

“…Linde 2012 saw increased exposure through the uniqueness of their collection: of the papers examined, 25% were not found digitally anywhere but the IR [19]. Van Wyk 2014 also spoke to the uniqueness of their collection at the University of Zululand, where exposure for their institutional output increased through the IR's overseas usage, which accounted for 5% of its overall usage [23].…”

Checking Rights

“…Most posters presented at a conference will fall into this category because they are not usually published in proceedings. Linde et al (2011) discussed some of the difficulties involved in self-archiving conference proceedings in more detail, including determination of copyright.…”

The Types, Frequencies, and Findability of Disciplinary Grey Literature within Prominent Subject Databases and Academic Institutional Repositories

“…Individual authors may not be well versed in copyright issues concerning authorship of conference papers and government documents and may pass up opportunities to make deposits (Schöpfel et al, 2012). Conference organizers may not make arrangements to archive the materials themselves, and also may not be clear with authors about the copyright status of their papers, further inhibiting the use of IRs (Linde et al, 2011). Also, authors often add their own metadata, which can lead to inconsistency across deposits, and in turn, limited findability (Colati, Dean, & Maull, 2009;Costanza, Knight, & Lui-Spencer, 2009).…”