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It was recently suggested by Stevan Harnad that we develop a "request Reprint by email" feature for DSpace, similar to one that has recently been implemented in GNU Reprints [EPprints|http://www.eprints.org/
] for deposits whose full-text access privileges are set to Closed Access or Restricted Access (ARA) rather than Open Access (OA), in order to tide over any A RA period with facilitated email access. The Request Copy Add-on is this feature developed by Minho University Documentation Services, initially for DSpace 1.3.2 and now also available for DSpace 1.4.
The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in Institutional Repositories (IsIRs) and its immediate usability by providing a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher embargo periods on public self-archiving, by creating a semi-automated mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an individual copy of a full-text deposited with access set as A.
This feature will be very important for advancing OA if universities and other research institutions adopt the Generic Model for an Open-Access Self-Archiving Mandate (http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html). In this model, depositing immediately (upon acceptance for publication) is mandatory whereas setting deposit immediately to OA is merely encouragesencouraged, leaving the decision up to the author.
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