Evaluating the implications of usage of Author Accepted Manuscripts

In scholarly publishing, many different versions of an author’s publication are often available online. For example, there are papers that have been submitted for peer review (preprints), papers that have been peer reviewed and accepted by a publisher (author accepted manuscripts), and final, edited versions that have been made available by the publisher (versions of record).

We were asked by Springer Nature, a leading global publisher, to provide insights into researcher behaviour and reading habits when it comes to open access articles. We compared and contrasted the perceptions of two different types of publications – author accepted manuscripts and versions of record.

The availability of different article versions is linked to ongoing debates around open access to scholarly publications. Depending on the specific version, publications can be stored on personal websites, shared by social networks or only made available online on the publishers’ own journal website.

Our research provided the publisher with insights into the usage of these types of publications, the value provided by each version and an overview of differences in practices across generations, geography and disciplines.

Our findings also underpinned a follow-on study by Springer Nature with ResearchGate, a leading academic social network, exploring researcher attitudes to the version of record, available here.