PSPB accepted the recommendations of an ad hoc committee, which reviewed the policy that had previously been revised in November 2010. The highlights of the current policy are as follows

  • The policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post their own version of their IEEE periodical or conference articles on their personal Web sites, those of their employers, or their funding agencies for the purpose of meeting public availability requirements prescribed by their funding agencies. Authors may post their version of an article as accepted for publication in an IEEE periodical or conference proceedings. Posting of the final PDF, as published by IEEE Xplore®, continues to be prohibited, except for open-access journal articles supported by payment of an article processing charge (APC), whose authors may freely post the final version.
  • The policy provides that IEEE periodicals will make available to each author a preprint version of that person's article that includes the Digital Object Identifier, IEEE's copyright notice, and a notice showing the article has been accepted for publication.
  • The policy states that authors are allowed to post versions of their articles on approved third-party servers that are operated by not-for-profit organizations. Because IEEE policy provides that authors are free to follow public access mandates of government funding agencies, IEEE authors may follow requirements to deposit their accepted manuscripts in those government repositories.

IEEE distributes accepted versions of journal articles for author posting through the Author Gateway, now used by all journals produced by IEEE Publishing Operations. (Some journals use services from external vendors, and these journals are encouraged to adopt similar services for the convenience of authors.) Authors' versions distributed through the Author Gateway include a live link to articles in IEEE Xplore. Most conferences do not use the Author Gateway; authors of conference articles should feel free to post their own version of their articles as accepted for publication by an IEEE conference, with the addition of a copyright notice and a Digital Object Identifier to the version of record in IEEE Xplore.

Information for authors

  • The IEEE Article Sharing and Posting Policies Infographic (PDF 334 KB) and the IEEE Conference Paper Sharing and Posting Policies (PDF 334 KB) provide a quick, at-a-glance overview of IEEE’s author posting policies as applied to each stage of an article’s and conference paper's life-cycle, from pre-submission through publication, including open-access articles and papers.
  • Policy on Electronic Dissemination from Section 8.1.9 of the IEEE Publication Services and Product Board Operations Manual, which details the full policy on author posting of accepted papers.
  • PSPB Operations Manual (PDF, 1 MB) provides publication policies of IEEE as set by the Publications Services and Products Board and approved by the IEEE Board of Directors.
  • If you have questions or would like additional information about the revised policy, please contact the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office at copyrights@ieee.org