Self-archiving is the act of (the author's) depositing a free copy of an electronic document online in order to provide open access to it. The term usually refers to the self-archiving of peer-reviewed research journal and conference articles, as well as theses and book chapters, deposited in the author's own institutional repository or open archive for the purpose of maximizing its accessibility, usage and citation impact. The term green open access has become common in recent years, distinguishing this approach from gold open access, where the journal itself makes the articles publicly available without charge to the reader.
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Origins
Self-archiving was first explicitly proposed as a universal practice by Stevan Harnad in his 1994 online posting "Subversive Proposal" (later published in Association of Research Libraries) although computer scientists had been practicing self-archiving in anonymous FTP archives since at least the 1980s (see CiteSeer) and physicists had been doing it since the early 1990s on the web (see arXiv).
As of September 2015, 78% of the 2107 publishers registered in the SHERPA/RoMEO publisher policy index endorse self-archiving by authors of the preprint and/or postprint versions of their papers.
Implementation
A majority of journals endorse unembargoed self-archiving of the postprint, immediately upon acceptance for publication. Other journals impose an embargo of 6–12 months or more on making the article open access.
Some publishers, such as Cambridge University Press or the American Geophysical Union, endorse self-archiving of the final published version of the article, not just peer-reviewed final drafts.
Whereas the right to self-archive postprints is often a copyright matter (if the rights have been transferred to the publisher), the right to self-archive preprints is merely a question of journal policy.
Locations for self-archiving include institutional repositories, subject-based repositories, personal websites, and social networking websites that target researchers. Publishers often offer more favorable self-archiving policies for institutional and subject repositories with shorter embargo periods.
Social reference management software websites such as Mendeley, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate facilitate sharing between researchers; however, these services are often subject to criticism for using scholars' contributions for commercial purposes as well as for copyright violation. They are also targeted by publishers for copyright compliance, such as when Elsevier (which purchased Mendeley) issued Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notices to Academia.edu for hosting scientific papers. Social networking services also do not fulfill the requirements of many self-archiving policies from grant funders, journals, and institutions.