Provided for in the national licence agreement with Elsevier, a first batch of files supplied by the publisher will be soon imported in HAL to complete existing records. The « green OA » part of the agreement stipulates that Elsevier provides the Manuscript Author Accepted (MAA) version of the articles of the authors affiliated to a French academic institution if they are listed as corresponding author. HAL will be able to diffuse them freely but only 24 months after the publication date.
The implementation by the CCSD will be carried out in two stages:
- Stage 1 in October 2021: addition of the MAA files to existing records. This represents a volume of approximately 3400 articles published between 1 January 2019 and 30 September 2019
- Stage 2 in December 2021:
- addition of articles not present in HAL (import of metadata and MAA files) published between January 1, 2019 and October 1, 2019. The volume is estimated at 3532 articles.
- import of 4412 new records of articles published between October 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020. The metadata will contain the MAA link on the Elsevier website. An opt-out feature will be implemented that will allow the corresponding author to refuse the link to the Elsevier platform.
Couperin-Elsevier agreement
The objective is to reference in HAL all the articles of authors affiliated to a French academic institution published in a journal included in the national agreement with the publisher Elsevier (2019-2022). The contract provides for the supply of :
- metadata of articles published in Elsevier journals included in the contract and having at least one author affiliated to a French institution. This metadata is used to ensure good referencing of French scientific production in the tools used by the institutions and, in general, to ensure greater worldwide visibility of these works ;
- the url on Elsevier’s platform of the accepted author manuscript (MAA or final version before publication) of articles whose corresponding author is affiliated to a French institution. The link « Elsevier-hosted Accepted Manuscript » is displayed on the HAL deposit 12 months after the publication date (except if the file containing the full text was already added by a user) ;
- the MAA files of articles whose corresponding author is affiliated to a French institution. These files are redistributed and freely accessible on HAL 24 months after the publication date.
This contractual supply does not contradict in any way the freedom of the researcher to self-archive the full text of his publications as it is explicitly mentioned in the agreement: The authors can self-archive their MAA in the open archives, in application and in the respect of the French Law for a digital Republic.
The process carried out in HAL
The CCSD has defined a specific workflow and made developments to treat the data.
First of all, a control is made (DOI, article title) to avoid the import of duplicates: if a deposit with file already exists in HAL, the Elsevier record is not treated ; if there is already a record without file, this is updated with an Elsevier identifier and the url to the MAA. This url will enable the recovery of the file to make it available on HAL 24 months after the publication date.
In October, on the 25158 articles provided until now, 30% are already present in HAL with the full text, 30% are referenced in HAL by a record and 39% are not known by HAL.
The domain metadata is mandatory in HAL but is absent in the Elsevier metadata : it is automatically added to the imported deposit by crossing the issn of the journal and the disciplines chosen in the HAL deposits associated with this journal. The affiliations supplied by Elsevier are aligned with the research structures of the reference repository of HAL: we complete the deposit only if the affiliation found is in AURéHAL in the status valid or closed. In the other cases, the deposit is not completed with the affiliation.
If an ORCID is present in the data provided by Elsevier matches to a HAL user, this one will have the property of the deposit (i.e. the right to modify it). Also, do not be surprised to receive notifications if you are in this case.
Finally, the files imported during the first stage will be put online without being moderated, except if the test comparing the title mentioned in the file and that of the existing record is not satisfactory.
These imports resulting from a contractual supply thus come to complete the referencing of the production of the researchers in HAL and will enrich CVs, collections and institutional portals. Other deliveries will follow since the agreement covers the period 2019-2022.