Disseminating your publications with an open archive: what does the law say?

Article 30 of the Law for a Digital Republic (2016) gives authors the right to disseminate their research work in open access:

for any article published in a journal whose frequency is at least annual,
the author has the right to make the version accepted for publication (postprint) freely available,
6 months after publication if it is in the field of Science, Technology, and Medicine,
12 months after publication if it is in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences.

What rights have you retained?

If your publication has been distributed under a Creative Commons-type licence: you can disseminate the publication freely under the licence's sharing conditions.
If you retained ownership of the publication when you signed the publication contract and did not give the publisher an exclusive distribution licence: you may disseminate the publication freely with the agreement of your co-authors.
If you have transferred your author's rights to the publisher or given the publisher an exclusive distribution licence: you must check the rights you have retained over your publication and inform your co-authors if the publication is to be disseminated.

Points to check

Which version of your publication you are authorised to disseminate. There are generally three versions of a publication:
- Preprint: This is the first version of the publication that you submit to a publisher before you know whether it has been accepted. This version has not been modified following peer review. It may also be called the submitted version.
- Postprint: This is the final version of the publication submitted by the author to the publisher; it is generally this version that you can deposit in an open archive. It contains all the changes made after peer review. This version must not contain any traces of formatting done by the publisher (footer, formatting of titles...). It may also be called the Author's Accepted Manuscript, your own final version of your article...
- Publisher's version: This is the final version produced and distributed by the publisher. It contains all the publisher's formatting and is available on the publisher's platform. It may also be called the definitive version or the version of record.
If there is an embargo on disseminating the postprint version
- An embargo is a period during which a publication or version of a publication cannot be disseminated. The period runs from the date of publication of the article. If your publisher imposes an embargo on the free dissemination of one of your publications, indicate this when you deposit the publication in an open archive.