If this understanding is correct, then authors publishing under the standard AAA author agreement would not have the right to post the final published version of their papers on a personal website or in repositories. This would hold true for any image files that visually replicated the published version, regardless of format or the source of the file (scanning the paper oneself, obtaining the pdf file from AnthroSource, etc.).

According to the AAA entry in the SHERPA/RoMEO database, it is expected that pre-prints that are placed online must be replaced by the post-print upon publication. This means that authors seeking publication in a AAA journal would need to be cautious about placing early “working paper” versions of their articles online in repositories as (unlike author websites) such archives do not generally have provisions for removing content which has been made available therein. Placing a pre-peer review draft on an author website would pose little danger, as replacing it with the post-peer review version after publication would present little technical challenge (although it would, of course, mess with any existing weblinks and the author website route looses many of the stability, metadata and permanence benefits associated with robust repositories). The RoMEO database entry describes other conditions governing the posting of pre-prints and post-prints. I am not describing these here and I would urge authors to study their author agreements and the RoMEO database entry completely before posting their AAA related work online. Of course, related issues arise with most published works, thus the AAA case is just one of many of relevance to authors in our field. The RoMEO database provides guidance on hundreds of publishers.

While the AAA record in the SHERPA/RoMEO “Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving” database shows a “most recent update” date of February 15, 2008, it also makes reference to the University of California Press’ online content system “Caliber” (and AnthroSource) rather than to Wiley InterScience, the publisher-wide system by which AAA content is now made available by the AAA’s publishing partner Wiley-Blackwell (WB also now produces AnthroSource. The University of California Press is no longer involved in AAA publishing.). I mention this irregularity as a reminder that SHERPA/RoMEO or any similar system cannot, by its very nature, perfectly reflect the (often rapidly changing) details of every publisher’s circumstances and policies. It is a guide for the use of authors and repository managers, but it is not a substitute to knowing what a particular author agreements says and means in its specifics.

Those interested in the issue of posting/archiving publisher produced PDFs may find a new report by SHERPA/RoMEO of interest. A study of the 414 publishers tracked in the database found that 51 allow immediate use of the final published PDF on author websites and in repositories. Some additional publishers allow for use of the published file after embargo periods ranging between 6 months and 5 years Find out more about this analysis and see the publisher list here. (I first learned of this list thanks to Open Access News.) Most of the publishers listed are not prominent in anthropological publishing, but two are well-known to our field–Duke University Press (which publishes Public Culture and Ethnohistory among other titles) and the University of California Press (which, while no longer publishing the AAA journals, still publishes a number of relevant area studies, sociology and history journals).

Searching the RoMEO database for American Anthropological Association can get one to the database’s entry for the association. (See here.)

I have just discovered that my 6 page PDF manuscript, which was made available for free to all comers via the repository, can now be purchased as an “e-book” for $2.99 from a firm that is using ABEBooks.com for this purpose. (Find it, but don’t purchase it, here.)

How common are such situations? For better or worse, the 2004 me marked the paper clearly with a dated (c) mark. Even if I had used a (cc) license (as I surely would have done had I posted it more recently), this still would not have been cool. I hate to think that I will need to buy my paper in order to get a clearer idea who is behind this and what exactly they are doing.

[DLC records clearly state: "This is an open-access digital library and archive. Copyright for DLC documents is retained by the authors. Use and distribution by you is subject to citation of the original source."]

My paper is too minor to worry about, but I wonder if anyone has thoughts on this phenomena more generally?

Peter Hirtle has an excellent (and short!) solution to this problem in his article Author Addenda: An Examination of Five Alternatives First he summarizes the problem:

When an author publishes a book or a paper, many publishers ask the author to transfer all copyrights in the work to the publisher. But that is not always to the author’s advantage.

When authors assign to publishers all of the rights that comprise the bundle of rights known as copyright, they lose control over their scholarly output. Assignment of copyright ownership may limit the ability of authors to incorporate elements into future articles and books. Authors may not be able to use their own work in their teaching, or to authorize others at the institution or elsewhere to use materials.

One solution, he says, is an author’s addendum — a little bit of legalese that you add to the agreement with your publisher and sign that lets you save the rights you need in order to make your work open access.

Luckily, you do not have to write these addenda yourself — several organizations have already created legal boilerplate that you can use. In addition to SPARC (which we have already mentioned) he evaluates four other cut-and-paste addenda. There is lots of variation out there, so you should be able to find one that is right for you.

Now, some would say: Will my publisher ever allow me to use these addenda? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. Publishers often want your copyright so that they will not have legal problems everytime they want to add their collection to JSTOR or include their pieces in a reader or whatnot. An addendum that allows everyone — including them — access to your piece makes this easier for them. The other big concern of publishers is that you are going to put the same article in one of their competitor’s journals which of course is not the point of these addenda. On the whole, publishers are quite flexible if you let them know you are just going to include a copy of your article on your own website or on your institution’s website.

So give one of these addenda a try today and keep your grad students busy updating your website!

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below and we’d be happy to answer them…