Western University's Open Repository is an Institutional Repository and can help you meet Tri-agency Open Access (OA) requirements at no cost to you.
Sharing your research as broadly as possible has an impact on impact. Publishing with a scholarly journal is the critical first step, but journals lock their content behind expensive paywalls, making your scholarship inaccessible to readers who are not otherwise affiliated with an institution wealthy enough to afford a journal subscription. This contributes to major global inequities of access and participation in systems of research, scholarship, and publishing.
To ensure that the broadest possible audience can access and read your work, you can share your work in an open access repository, regardless of where you publish. This type of sharing via a repository is often called self-archiving or Green Open Access.
The Open Repository can also help you meet OA requirements form funders, usually by supplying the author accepted manuscript for hosting in the repository. It's a win win! a copy of the paper in the journal AND a copy in the IR, boosting its signal and reach!
See our Submission Guidelines to learn how to add items to the Open Repository.
Contact rsclib@uwo.ca for more information.
Can published articles be posted in Western University's Open Repository? The short answer is maybe. Visit Shareyourpaper.org and enter the DOI of your paper. This tool will gather information about your paper and tell you the easiest way to share it.
Do you want to understand more about publisher and journal policies and what they permit? Try exploring the Open Policy Finder or contact us.
