Hosting Policy
All content published by AEE in our journals and proceedings series is hosted on our own proprietary content platform as well as other platforms such as repositories, preprint servers and scholarly collaboration networks can host research published by AEE following the guidelines below.
The following principles underpin our hosting policy:
- AEE supports the STM Article Sharing Principles and we want to work in partnership with organizations aggregating and making available versions of articles published by researchers with AEE. This policy complements our sharing policy which outlines how authors can share their research, and agreements with subscribing institutions about how licensed material can be shared.
- We believe that we all have a shared responsibility to work together to ensure researchers can share research quickly, easily, and responsibly. This requires active partnering to ensure the coherence and integrity of the scientific record, to promote responsible sharing in a way that respects the needs of all stakeholders, and to enable impact and usage measurement in a distributed environment
- Hosting platforms should develop and share COUNTER compliant usage statistics so that researchers and publishers have a full picture of how articles are shared and used
- Where commercial organizations seek to benefit from hosting versions of articles on their platforms, formal commercial arrangements should be made with AEE. Non-commercial organizations can host documents under the terms of this policy.
- Sites or repositories that provide a service to other organizations or agencies, even if those other organizations or agencies are themselves non-commercial entities, are considered to be providing a commercial service, and this service activity will also require a commercial arrangement with AEE.
Non-commercial platforms
Guidance for non-commercial organizations and institutional repositories:
- Preprints. Preprints can be hosted anytime anywhere. If accepted for publication, hosting organizations should link via the DOI from the preprint to the final published article. Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications, so these links will help users to find, access, cite and use the best available version. Note that some society-owned journals may have different preprint policies which can be found on the relevant journal’s homepage if applicable. Under no circumstances should preprints be added to or enhanced in any way to appear more like, or to substitute for, the final versions of articles.
- Accepted Manuscripts. Research institutes can host their employees’ and students’ accepted manuscripts immediately for internal institutional use or private scholarly sharing as part of an invited research collaboration working group. Internal institutional use means use for classroom teaching and internal training (including use in course packs and courseware programs, though not in MOOCs) and inclusion of the manuscript in applications for grant funding. Such manuscripts can also be shared publicly, including by other non-commercial organizations, on the condition that applicable license terms for the manuscript are adhered to. In any case, accepted manuscripts should: (a) link to the formal publication via its DOI; (b) bear a valid Creative Commons user license; (c) not be stored on an insecure network or be discoverable or accessible except as described above; (d) not be added to or enhanced in any way to appear more like, or to substitute for, the final published article; (e) not be used or posted for commercial gain without a formal agreement with AEE; and (f) not be used to substitute for services provided directly by the journal, for example, article aggregation, systematic distribution via email lists or list servers or share buttons, posting or linking by commercial companies for use by customers of such companies (e.g. pharmaceutical companies and physician-prescribers), etc.
- Final Published Articles (a.k.a. ‘versions of record’). These may be hosted according to the applicable end-user license. This license should appear on the hosted version of the article along with a DOI-link to the citable version of record on the AEE platform.
Commercial Platforms
Guidance for commercial organizations:
- Preprints. Preprints can be hosted anytime anywhere. If accepted for publication, hosting organizations should link via the DOI from the preprint to the final published article. Millions of researchers have access to the formal publications, so these links will help users to find, access, cite and use the best available version. Note that some society-owned journals may have different preprint policies which can be found on the relevant journal’s homepage if applicable. Under no circumstances should preprints be added to or enhanced in any way to appear more like, or to substitute for, the final versions of articles.
- Accepted Manuscripts. Commercial organizations, such as Scholarly Collaboration Networks, are required to have an agreement with AEE for aggregating and making available articles on their platform. Subject to such an agreement, commercial organizations may immediately host their users’ accepted manuscripts for private scholarly sharing as part of an invitation-only working group and for public sharing on the condition that applicable license terms for the manuscript are adhered to. In any case, accepted manuscripts should: (a) link to the formal publication via its DOI; (b) bear a valid Creative Commons user license; (c) not be stored on an insecure network or be discoverable or accessible except as described above; (d) not be added to or enhanced in any way to appear more like, or to substitute for, the final published article; (e) not be used or posted for commercial gain without a formal agreement with AEE, for example, by associating advertising with the full-text of the manuscript, providing hosting services to other repositories or other organizations, charging fees for document delivery or access, etc.; and (f) not be used to substitute for services provided directly by the journal, for example, article aggregation, systematic distribution via email lists or list servers or share buttons, posting or linking by commercial companies for use by customers of such companies (e.g. pharmaceutical companies and physician-prescribers), etc.
- Final Published Articles (a.k.a. ‘versions of record’). These may be hosted according to the applicable end-user license. This license should appear on the hosted version of the article along with a DOI-link to the citable version of record on the AEE platform. Note that this means that any articles bearing a non-commercial (NC-designated) Creative Commons license cannot be hosted on commercial platforms or scholarly collaboration networks such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu.