Date of Deposit vs. Discoverable Date

Date of deposit

Date on which a copy of a version of a work and its metadata is deposited in a repository (or equivalent). Not necessarily the same as the date that the work becomes discoverable. A period of time may elapse after deposit, but before the record is made publicly available during which the record may be checked for accuracy and compliance by repository administration staff and an embargo may be applied.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 17 Aug 2026

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Worked examples

Is an instance

An author deposits their accepted manuscript in their institutional repository the day it is accepted; the repository's moderation queue takes five business days to check the record, and the journal's self-archiving policy applies a 12-month embargo from the date of acceptance, so the record becomes publicly visible only after both steps are complete.

Date of deposit is the date on which a copy of a work, and its accompanying metadata, is submitted into a repository or equivalent system. It is not necessarily the same date the work becomes publicly discoverable — a period can elapse after deposit, during which repository staff check the submission for accuracy and compliance, and during which any applicable embargo is applied.

Deposit date vs. discoverable date

Because deposit is an administrative act — a file and its metadata entering a system — while public discoverability depends on downstream review and any embargo, the two dates can diverge meaningfully:

A repository may hold a submission in a moderation queue for days or weeks before it passes quality checks and becomes visible.
Even once checks pass, if an embargo applies, the full text may stay hidden (with only the metadata record visible) until the date of end of embargo.
The date the work finally becomes visible to the public is recorded separately as the date of first open access.

Why the deposit date matters for compliance

Funder open access mandates commonly set a compliance deadline measured from the date of acceptance or publication (see date of acceptance), and require the accepted manuscript or version of record to be deposited by that deadline — regardless of when the embargo, if any, lets the record become publicly visible. A research office verifying compliance therefore checks the date of deposit itself, not just whether the record is currently visible, since a work can be compliant (deposited on time) while still embargoed from public view.

Worked example

An author deposits their accepted manuscript in their institutional repository the day it is accepted. The repository’s moderation queue takes five business days to check the record, and the journal’s self-archiving policy applies a 12-month embargo from the date of acceptance. The date of deposit is the day the author submitted the file; the record becomes publicly visible only after both the moderation check and the 12-month embargo have passed.

Counter-example

The date a reader first finds and downloads a deposited article is not its date of deposit — that reflects the date of first open access (or, for records visible immediately, the same date). The date of deposit reflects only when the file and metadata entered the repository.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does date of deposit mean the work is now publicly available?

Not necessarily. Deposit only records that the work and its metadata entered the repository. Public availability can lag behind due to moderation/quality checks or an applicable embargo.

Why do funder policies care about the deposit date specifically?

Because many funder mandates require deposit by a set deadline (often tied to date of acceptance), independent of when any embargo later lifts — meeting the deposit deadline is what counts for compliance, even if the record stays embargoed afterward.

What is deposited — the accepted manuscript or the published version?

It depends on the publisher’s self-archiving policy and the funder mandate. See document version for how the accepted manuscript, version of record, and other versions differ, and which ones publishers typically allow to be deposited.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Date of deposit"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/date-of-deposit" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/date-of-deposit",
  "name": "Date of deposit",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/date-of-deposit",
  "description": "Date on which a copy of a version of a work and its metadata is deposited in a repository (or equivalent). Not necessarily the same as the date that the work becomes discoverable. A period of time may elapse after deposit, but before the record is made publicly available during which the record may be checked for accuracy and compliance by repository administration staff and an embargo may be applied.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-lifecycle#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/date-of-deposit",
  "sameAs": [],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:58:44",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}