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Scholarly Communications

Terms and their Meanings

Accepted manuscript: See Post-Print

Copyright transfer: The handing over of some or all publishing rights of an article from the author to a publisher.

Creative commons (CC): A licensing system that allows a creator of a work to provide a standardized method to legally grant permission to the public to use their work.

Embargo: A time period during which an article cannot be published anywhere besides the journal which holds temporary exclusive rights to publishing said article.
 

Green OA: Green Open Access; see Self-Archiving


Institutional Repository: A database of works (e.g. articles, theses, etc.) generated by the faculty, staff, and students of an institution (usually a university) made available to the public.

Open Access: Works such as peer-reviewed journal articles, graduate theses, data, or other types of scholarly information made available free of charge, immediately (no publisher delay or embargo), and in a permanently accessible, online format. 

Post-print: The version of your article generated after completing peer review.

Pre-print: Any and all versions of your article created before submission to peer review.


Sandwich thesis: also known as 'collection of articles' or 'integrated thesis'; a thesis that consist of multiple research papers as opposed to a single document.

Scholarly Communication: The cycle of research from creation of a work of academic research, its publication, its discovery by other researchers, back to the creation of new research informed by prior research.

Self-archiving: Placing your own work in a repository even if it has already been submitted into a journal. While most journals allow self-archiving by default (with limitations on which version of your work you can self-archive), those that don't will require negotiation of author's rights to retain your right to self-archiving.

Submitted manuscript: see Pre-Print

Version of record: The version of an article that appears in a published journal