Removing articles from OA repositories

Stevan Harnad, Optimal OA IR Preprint and Postprint Deposit and Withdrawal Policy, Open Access Archivangelism, August 11, 2006.

Summary: At a time when the immediate problem for Open Access (OA) Institutional Repositories (IRs) is not removal but deposit (IRs are still mostly empty), there is no need for an institutional or departmental mediator/moderator/approver phase in the self-archiving process. Authorised institutional authors should all be able to deposit/approve and delete/approve their own papers, instantaneously. If it is felt that there is a need for vetting deposits, let the deposits be monitored only after they have been successfully deposited and are visible in the IR. A distinction also needs to be made between (i) unrefereed preprints and (ii) refereed postprints of published articles. (i) If you want authors to be willing to deposit their unrefereed preprints at all, you must allow them to remove them at will, instantaneously. (ii) For refereed postprints, 99% of the time authors will never want to remove them. They are published. The postprint is merely a supplement to the published version, for those would-be users who cannot afford access to the published version. The published version (at the publisher's website) cannot be withdrawn; so withdrawing the access-supplement in the author's own IR is in general pointless.