Research Guides: Open Science: Open Access Publication Permission

Is it Open Access? A Guide to Publisher's Restrictions

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
"SPARC is a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education. SPARC empowers people to solve big problems and make new discoveries through the adoption of policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education."

"SPARC’s strategy focuses on reducing barriers to the access, sharing, and use of knowledge. Our highest priority is advancing the understanding and implementation of policies and practices that make openness the default for research outputs and educational materials—including journal articles, digital data and educational resources."
The Right to Research Coalition
"...founded by students in the summer of 2009 to promote an open scholarly publishing system based on the belief that no student should be denied access to the articles they need because their institution cannot afford the often high cost of access. Since its launch, the Coalition has grown to represent nearly 7 million students internationally and counts among its members the largest student organizations in both the United States and Canada."

Is it Open Access? A Guide to Publisher's Restrictions

Sherpa/Romeo shows the open access permissions and restrictions for each journal covered with links to the publishers' copyright agreements.

Publishers are divided into categories depending on the self-archiving restrictions.

Examples of some publishers in science and engineering that are currently designated "white" (archiving not formally supported) by the Sherpa/Romeo Website (subject to change):

American Dental Association
Society for General Microbiology
Soil Science Society of America

Green designates publishers with the least restrictions, not all of which allow the posting or deposition of the publisher's PDF version. For manuscripts with considerable equations, tables, figures, etc. this can be a major handicap. Examples of publishers with this restriction are (subject to change):

American Society of Plant Biologists
Elsevier
John Wiley and Sons

You may also want to check out Beall's List of Predatory Open Access Publishers, a watchlist of publishers considered to be exploiting the OA Publishing process for their own profits at the authors expense.