FAQ
What scholarly works are covered by the UNT Open Access Policy?
The UNT Open Access Policy has two goals. For long-term stewardship of all scholarly work created by UNT Community Members, they are encouraged to deposit their works in the UNT Scholarly Works institutional repository. A subset of those scholarly works, namely, the peer-reviewed, accepted-for-publication (post-peer review, pre-typeset) journal articles, is covered by the policy with the requirement of immediate deposit and the setting of the access level to Open Access upon deposit. However, the access level and the granting of the license to UNT by the author will be aligned with the publishers' policies. Further, the author can request, for an individual article, a waiver from granting the license, and the author can request a more restricted access level than what is allowed by a publishers' policy.
My discipline already has a practice of publishing preprints in Open Access, disciplinary repositories (e.g., arXiv). Do we need to do anything differently because of the UNT Open Access Policy?
No. The UNT Open Access Policy refers to the accepted manuscripts and versions of record (see Policy for full definitions). Faculty members may continue to publish their preprints as they have been doing. There is no requirement for duplicate submissions of preprints in the UNT Scholarly Works repository, but faculty members are encouraged to deposit their preprints at UNT if they desire.
How does the UNT Open Access Policy affect my current publishing practices?
Authors continue to prepare articles for publication in the same way they always have. The choice of journals in which to publish is left entirely to the authors. The UNT Open Access Policy fosters publishing by encouraging scholars to also deposit their peer-reviewed, accepted for publication, journal articles into our UNT Scholarly Works repository, which increases the value and impact of the research and provides wider dissemination.
Can I deposit a draft of my publication and meet the UNT Open Access Policy requirement?
To ensure the highest quality of content in the UNT Scholarly Works repository, the policy identifies for peer-reviewed, accepted-for-publication journal articles that an author deposits the "accepted manuscript" (i.e., version of record) if allowed by the publisher's policy. It is that version that is specified under the Policy. For any other scholarly works that a UNT Community Member wishes to deposit in our repository, the Policy notes that the author determines what constitutes the "final version" that is deposited.