Author’s Approved Manuscript (AAM) and Increasing the Impact of Your Research

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Guest Post from LeEtta Schmidt, Copyright Librarian and Intellectual Property Librarian at USF Tampa Library.

Publishers have traditionally taken on the bulk of the work in promoting the books and journals that they manage.  Even with this publisher support, an individual author is one of many whose works are being marketed by their publisher.  Authors who take extra steps after publication sharing and advertising their work can help to increase the impact of their publications.  One method of increasing a journal article’s audience is to make use of the publisher’s author rights or author posting policies by contributing an Author’s Approved Manuscript (AAM) to an institutional repository..  Addition of an AAM to an institutional repository can increase access to the article by providing an open pathway for scholars and researchers who do not have subscription access to the journal in which the article was published.  Institutional Repositories also often come with statistics and reader tracking reports that can help authors track the effect of this improved access.

The Authors Approved Manuscript, sometimes called a Post Print or the Accepted Manuscript, is the version of an article submission that has been officially accepted after updates required by the peer review process.  This version is not yet formatted by the publisher in any way, but the text is much the same as it will be in the official published version, or Version of Record, including all the added value of rigorous peer review.  Submitting an AAM to an institutional repository is also a method of  Open Access (OA), called Green Open Access.  OA has grown as a movement, spurred on by mandates from governments and funding agencies, with the aim of providing free access to research that would traditionally have been locked behind paywalls to which only well funded institutions could obtain subscriptions.  Unlike more rigid forms of OA, Green OA allows authors to publish via traditional pathways, where publication of an article is behind a paywall, with the addition of more open access to the AAM in an institutional repository.  Green OA is accepted by many research funders, though it sometimes includes an embargo period required by the publisher.

How does an author get their AAM?

The realities of the modern article submission process mean that many authors don’t often have an AAM in hand.  Revisions done after peer review are made with track changes that are accepted by the editor or perhaps made directly in online manuscript submission systems;  margins of the manuscript may be filled with reviewer comments and suggestions;  images and figures are in different files; articles have been anonymized  for peer review; title pages are missing.  This is not a copy that most authors would feel comfortable with sharing openly.  Loading an AAM into a repository will usually require the author to prepare the AAM separately from the publication process.  Authors that download or save a copy of the accepted article can remove track changes and review comments.  Figure files and title pages will also need to reunited with the manuscript, and any anonymization will need to be undone.  Finally, many publishers require a specially formatted citation on an AAM title page that directs users to the published version.  Making an AAM for later submission in an institutional repository requires planning and a little extra work on the part of the author.  The pay-off of this work can be substantial.

Placing AAMs in institutional repositories has been shown to increase article citation rates even more than other methods of OA publishing (Young & Brandes, 2020; Zhang & Watson, 2017).  At USF, submitting AAMs in the institutional repository also gives authors the option to collect them all under one author page, called Selected Works, where links to the AAMs are listed alongside the author’s presentations, other publications, and author CV, providing a reader with easy access to an author’s work regardless of journal or venue.  The statistics that authors are provided with via USF’s institutional repository, Scholar Commons, provide information on the institution and location of readers, effect of social media discussion, and number of times any one work is accessed.

The USF Libraries has services to help authors with a variety of steps in the research life-cycle.  Library experts on copyright can help authors determine if their publishers allow AAMs to be posted in a repository, and the Scholarly Communication Librarians. can assist authors on submitting to the institutional repository and set up an author Selected Works page.

References

  • Young, J. S. & Brandes, P. M. (2020) Green and Gold Open Access Citation and Interdisciplinary Advantage:  A bibliometric study of two science journals.  The Journal of Academic Librarianship.  46:  102-105.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2019.102105

Zhang, L. & Watson, E. M. (2017) Measuring the Impact of Gold and Green Open Access.  The Journal of Academic Librarianship.  43: 337-

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