Elsevier Articles Can Be Posted On Personal/Institutional Sites

-- Library Journal, 6/25/2004

Reed Elsevier will allow authors who submit articles for publication in its STM journals to make the research freely available on their personal or institutional web sites. Papers can appear on such sites, in their final versions as accepted by the journal, before publication in Elsevier titles. However, authors are still prohibited from putting links to their articles from centralized databases. For several years, Elsevier has permitted the posting of pre-print versions of articles without requiring permission. "Now, no permission is required for authors to revise and widely post the final version of the text, provided that the posting contains a link to the home page of the journal in which the article was published, and that the posting is not used for commercial purposes--such as systematic distribution or creating links for commercial customers to articles," clarifies Reed Elsevier's official announcement. To preserve the integrity of the official record of publication, the final published version as it appears in the journal (PDF and HTML) will continue to be available only on an Elsevier site.

Said Arie Jongejan, CEO, science and technology, Elsevier, "Several years ago, we supported the development of pre-print servers by deciding papers posted to such servers would not be viewed as 'prior submissions.' Furthermore, following Elsevier's publication of papers, we have not required the removal of pre-print versions from pre-print servers. But we have gone even further than that: for several years we have permitted authors to post their final version as accepted on secure, internal institutional networks. Today, we have taken an important step, which demonstrates our continued support for scholarly communications."