Self-archiving and the Copyright Transfer Agreements of ISI-ranked library and information science journals

A study of ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n=52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals towards self-archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works, preferably in an OAI-compliant open access repository. Results show that 62 % (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open web; 38 % (20) do. Of the 38 % that have CTAs available, two are open access journals. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available a high level of ambiguity exists. Of the 62 % that do not have a public CTA, 40 % are silent about self-archiving. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self-archiving, and author instructions, reveals that only five, 10% of the ISI-ranked LIS journals, actually prohibit self-archiving by publisher rule. Copyright transfer agreements are a moving target and publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co-exist in the scholarly journal publishing arena. Given the ambivalence of journal publishers, the communities might be better off by self-archiving in open access archives and strategically building an LIS information commons through a society-led global scholarly communication consortium. The aggregation of OAI-compliant archives and development of disciplinary-specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility besides ameliorating its own scholarly communication and publishing systems, and serving as a model for others.