Exploiting Elsevier’s Creative Commons License Requirement to Subvert Embargo

Abstract

In the last round of author sharing policy revisions, Elsevier created a labyrinthine title-by-title embargo structure requiring embargoes from 12-48 months for author sharing via institutional repository (IR), while permitting immediate sharing via author's personal website or blog. At the same time, all pre-publication versions are to bear a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license. At the time this policy was announced, it was rightly criticized by many in the scholarly communication community as overly complicated and unnecessary. However, this CC licensing requirement creates an avenue for subverting the embargo in the IR to achieve quicker open distribution of the author's accepted manuscript. In short, authors may post an appropriately licensed copy on their personal site, at which point we may deposit without embargo in the IR, not through the license granted in the publication agreement, but through the CC license on the author's version, which the sharing policy mandates. This poster will outline this issue, our experimentation with application, and engage viewers in questions regarding its potential risks, benefits, and workflows.