Policies for Authors

Green Open Access
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MSP is a no-em­bargo green open ac­cess pub­lish­er. We ac­cept sub­mis­sions of work that is avail­able on open archives in pre­print form. We al­low au­thors to de­pos­it the last ver­sion of their manuscript after peer re­view (the “au­thor’s ac­cep­ted manuscript”) to the arX­iv, oth­er pre­print serv­ers, or in a sub­ject or in­sti­tu­tion­al re­pos­it­ory. (If strictly re­quired by the fun­der of the re­search, this ver­sion can be dis­trib­uted un­der a CC-BY li­cense.)

However, we do ask au­thors that upon pub­lic­a­tion they add a DOI link to the pre­print archive’s ver­sion, dir­ect­ing pro­spect­ive read­ers to the pub­lished art­icle on the journ­al’s web site. The ref­er­eed, copy­ed­ited and pub­lished ver­sion of the art­icle is, after all, the fi­nal “ver­sion of re­cord”.

Author’s distribution of published version

Upon pub­lic­a­tion, we send all au­thors a PDF file of their pub­lished art­icle (the “ver­sion of re­cord”). This file is for the au­thor’s own use. We ask au­thors not to place this PDF file on their home page or open archives. In­stead, they should pro­mote the DOI link to the journ­al’s copy. We ask au­thors to re­mem­ber that, if they were to make a prac­tice of post­ing the fi­nal pub­lished PDF file, there would be no in­cent­ive for any­one to sub­scribe, and the journ­al could not sur­vive.

Ex­cep­tion­ally, if a pro­spect­ive read­er has no way to down­load the art­icle from the journ­al’s web site (that is, if their in­sti­tu­tion does not sub­scribe and they can­not af­ford to buy the art­icle), au­thors can send them the PDF file.

Author’s institutional repositories

Many in­sti­tu­tions now re­quire or en­cour­age their re­search­ers to de­pos­it pub­lished art­icles in their in­sti­tu­tion­al re­pos­it­or­ies. MSP co­oper­ates with this re­quire­ment by send­ing au­thors or lib­rar­i­ans, upon de­mand, a copy of the ver­sion of re­cord that is suit­able for the pur­pose. We re­quest that you use the fi­nal pub­lished ver­sion (the “ver­sion of re­cord”) and not a pre­print or post­print ver­sion, which are not con­sidered defin­it­ive.

Delayed public access

All art­icles pub­lished by MSP be­come free to ac­cess and read after six years past pub­lic­a­tion (mean­ing on the sixth Janu­ary 1st after the pub­lic­a­tion date). The Journ­al of Soft­ware for Al­gebra and Geo­metry is im­me­di­ately free to read. None of our journ­als charge any au­thor fees.

Requests for post-publication name changes  

In the event that a con­trib­ut­or to MSP journ­als changes their leg­al or pro­fes­sion­al name, they can re­quest that MSP ad­opt the change in MSP sys­tems, eras­ing the old name as much as pos­sible. MSP in­tends to hon­or such re­quests to the ex­tent prac­tic­able. For our full policy on name changes, see this page.

Our standard consent-to-publish agreement  (PDF)  
Statement on publishing ethics  
Testimonials from authors  
MSP’s thoughts and approach to open access