articles, and author versions submitted by publishers. The ingest processes for author manuscripts differ from those for the published versions. When a publisher submits an author manuscript, authors must still provide grant information and review and approve their manuscript’s accuracy following NIH’s standardization of document formatting, to complete deposit and comply with the policy.1 Many authors are submitting their own manuscripts with little difficulty. Libraries are assisting some authors, and are finding that the process is simple enough that most authors can more easily and expeditiously deposit their works themselves. Relatively few publishers are participating in NIH’s Full Participation, Portfolio, or Selective Deposit programs,2 whereby they deposit published versions of articles. This is a well-developed process and, for those publishers participating, it relieves their authors from needing to go into PubMed Central to complete deposit. Some publishers are passing the author version to PubMed Central along with contact information for the authors. Although these publishers are ensuring that deposit begins, many authors are failing to review their articles to allow completion of deposit, possibly from an incorrect belief that the publisher’s transfer of the manuscript to PubMed Central completes the deposit process rather than merely beginning it. Libraries and institutions could better assist their authors with deposit if they could be notified concurrently with the author or could mediate notification of the author about the final deposit steps needed. General education of authors regarding their responsibilities for completing the deposit process when publishers submit manuscripts on their behalf is another service libraries could provide. How could institutional support for NIH submission be broadened to include facilitating deposits into institutionally based repositories? Institutions could potentially develop submission streams that are comparable to those that some publishers have created. While they would have the same issue regarding authors’ need to complete the deposit process, institutions may be better positioned to work with authors to complete all steps of the deposit process. RLI 263 26 Achieving the Full Potential of Repository Deposit Policies ( C O N T I N U E D ) APRIL 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC
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