HAL now uses the Mir@bel information service to display publishers’ policies regarding the self-archiving of different versions of articles (preprints, postprints, and published versions). As the national contact point for the Open policy finder (formerly Sherpa/Romeo), Mir@bel provides French translations of information and covers more French journals than the previous service.
Which version(s) of my article can I deposit in HAL? Should I add an embargo period or not? These are the questions you need to ask when you want to add the full text of your article to HAL. Policies on self-archiving in open repositories vary widely among publishers, and it is not always easy to navigate them. This is why, as soon as a journal title is entered, HAL displays this information directly in the deposit interface (a valid title form is indicated by the green colour code).
Until now, HAL has relied on data from Sherpa/Romeo, which has now become the Open policy finder. The information is in English, and of course the publisher must have declared its policy. It was found that French journals were underrepresented, a gap that Mir@bel aims to fill.
Since 2022, under the auspices of the French Committee for Open Science, Mir@bel has offered a service for declaring and consulting publication and self-archiving policies for French scientific journals. This service centralises these policies in France and shares them with the Open policy finder via a partnership with JISC (the UK Joint Information Systems Committee), the British agency responsible for digital services in higher education and research. This gives French publishing greater visibility in a reference database.
Additionally, Mir@bel retrieves data from the Open Policy Finder, translates it into French and displays it in its information system.
From now on, when you select a journal title during the deposit process, the displayed data will be extracted from Mir@bel. This data is managed in auréHAL.
If your journal’s data are not available in Mir@bel, HAL will present data from the Open policy finder instead (non-translated data).
Integrating Mir@bel data into HAL offers many advantages:
- For users, it provides broader coverage of French scholarly journals and access to French-language information if they select this language for the interface.
- For the CCSD, it provides a close and responsive contact partner while strengthening cooperation with a platform recognised by the academic community and supported by the French Committee for Open Science.
The shared objective is to improve the clarity of publisher policies, facilitate self-archiving and promote open access to research results.
The Mir@bel network
Mir@bel was created in France in 2009 by librarians with the aim of highlighting the content of online journals. It is led by Sciences Po Lyon, Sciences Po Grenoble–UGA, ENTPE and MSH Dijon. The Mir@bel network brings together library and publishing professionals from a variety of organisations – higher education institutions, university presses, national operators, research units, commercial publishers – to work on journal indexing.
The steering committee’s decisions are guided by open science principles, and it develops international partnerships accordingly. Since 2025, Mir@bel has been a member of the Open policy finder’s advisory committee.
The CCSD is part of the network to monitor journals published on Episciences.