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ADDENDUM: Further information on Oxford Journals' Self-Archiving Policy

8 August 2005

Further to the Oxford Journals announcement dated 4 May, 2005 Oxford Journals launches Oxford Open - a new open access initiative, please note the following additional policy information for authors.

Please note that these are general guidelines and do not apply to all journals: please refer to each journal homepage for full policy details of a particular title.

Postprint* use of Science and Medical content from Oxford Journals: authors may upload copies of accepted manuscripts (postprints) to institutional and/or centrally organized repositories (including PubMed Central) 12 months after first online publication in the journal.

Postprint* use of Humanities and Social Science content from Oxford Journals: authors may upload a postprint to institutional and/or centrally organized repositories (including PubMed Central), but must stipulate that public availability be delayed until 24 months after first online publication in the journal.

The majority of journals published by Oxford are currently sustained by a subscription-based model. With the above policies we aim to strike a balance between safeguarding the subscriptions upon which journals rely, and allowing authors to comply with the archiving requirements of their funding bodies and institutions. We believe that this balance point will vary by discipline - hence the adoption of variable delay periods before public access. It is essential for the continuation of journals that we do not undermine the value of subscriptions without an alternative business model in place.

For both Science and Medical, and Humanities and Social Science journals, Oxford Journals also stipulates that postprints should also be clearly identified as such, and a link to the final published version should also be included. This will guarantee that the definitive version is readily available to those accessing an author's article from public repositories, and means that an article is more likely to be cited correctly.

We strongly encourage authors to deposit the URL rather than the postprint version of their manuscript into these repositories, as this gives access to the definitive version of the article, including any supplementary material or related articles. The required time delay for deposition of the URL is again journal dependent, but usually the same as the postprint policy.

For more information about the self-archiving policy of each journal please go to the Journal Home Page, or contact the editorial office.

Full details of Oxford Journals' publication rights policies, including author rights, can be found at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/ in the section Copyright FAQ's.

*A "postprint" is a pre copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication following peer review.