Eur J Endocrinol -- Archiving policy

Various research funders around the world 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.

The European Journal of Endocrinology 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 potential offered by alternative business models, especially the author-pays Open Access model. It is now extending its Open Access Option to all authors who prefer the free-to-reader model. In addition, the Open Access route, supported by an author-side fee, remains compulsory for articles whose authors are required, whether by funding bodies or institutions, to make the article free to all, for example by depositing on an institutional or subject repository, within a deadline that is shorter than 12 months from final publication.

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 carried out 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 the definitive version the journal has accepted for publication.

In order to balance these requirements, the journal has therefore arrived at the following policy.

Statement of policy

Authors whose research funding body or institution requires them to make their article freely available online earlier than 12 months from official publication must pay an Open Access Fee (see Open Access Payment Authorization Form) and section 2 below then applies.

1. Without payment of the Open Access Fee

If you are the author of an article that has been accepted for publication in a the European Journal of Endocrinology and you have not paid the Open Access Fee , you may not self archive or otherwise deposit your article on freely available institutional or other online repositories (including PubMed Central), unless:
(i) The version deposited is the manuscript, as finally accepted by the journal but prior to copy editing and page formatting.
(ii) The authors ensure that it will not become freely available to the public until 12 months after publication in the journal.
(iii) The manuscript made available in this way includes the disclaimer below:

Disclaimer. This is not the definitive version of record of this article.

European Journal of Endocrinology

[insert DOI link]

[insert year of publication]

The DOI link mentioned above will be provided by the publisher, BioScientifica Ltd, upon acceptance. Acceptance of these stipulations is a condition of publication; they are included in the assignment of copyright form .

2. Upon payment of the Open Access Fee

The Open Access Fee is currently £2000 + VAT (UK pounds; VAT is sales tax currently set at 17.5%, and applies to all authors regardless of location). For articles whose corresponding author is based at an institution with a current subscription to the journal, the fee is reduced to £1000 + VAT. This fee is a compulsory condition of publication if your funding body or institution requires the article to be made freely available sooner than 12 months after publication (this is the case for research funded in whole or in part by the Wellcome Trust or the UK’s Medical Research Council, for example; see Open Access Payment Authorization Form). In return for this fee, the European Journal of Endocrinology will

Make the article freely available to all on the journal’s web site immediately upon official publication;
Deposit the final published version of record 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;

You are not then bound by conditions (i) and (ii) set out in section 1 above: you are free to post copies of the final published version on any online repositories or other web sites 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.

Introduction

Statement of policy