Change in IEEE Author Policy: Impact on MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

In January 2011, the IEEE changed a key author policy, discontinuing the right authors had to post the final published version of their IEEE articles on the web. This alters what authors can do with their work and how the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy can be implemented for these papers.

The policy change is not retrospective: papers posted before January do not need to be taken down from the web. But from January on, authors may post only their accepted manuscripts, not the final published version of their articles.

As a consequence of this policy change, the MIT Libraries can no longer copy the final published articles from IEEE’s database and post them in MIT’s research repository, Dspace@MIT, as we have been doing since the faculty passed their Open Access Policy.

Instead, the Libraries are now requesting that authors submit their final accepted manuscripts of IEEE papers for deposit under the Policy. Papers can be uploaded through a simple web form and will appear in the Open Access Articles Collection.

For more information: