Deposit

Deposit is the act of uploading a digital copy of a work — along with its metadata — into a digital repository or similar service, carried out by the author(s) or their agent. Ideally the accompanying metadata supports the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), so the deposited work can be located and reused by others independent of the specific repository software involved.

Depositing a work — sometimes called uploading, submitting, or self-archiving — does not by itself imply anything about the work’s access status. A deposited item can be freely available immediately, held under an embargo, or not yet formally published at all (for example, a preprint or an accepted manuscript ahead of the journal’s own publication date). Deposit is the administrative act; open access is a separate status that may or may not follow from it, and may not follow immediately.

Deposit as an act, distinct from the resulting record

CASRAI’s vocabulary separates “deposit” (the act) from the date of deposit (when it happened) and from whatever access status results — see access, closed access, and date of first open access. This separation matters practically: a research office checking funder compliance typically needs to confirm that a deposit happened, and happened by a specific deadline, independent of whether the resulting record is currently visible to the public (it may still be within an embargo period).

What gets deposited, and where

Depositing usually means submitting one specific document version — most commonly the author accepted manuscript, since that is the version most publisher self-archiving policies permit authors to deposit, rather than the publisher’s typeset version of record. Deposit destinations include an author’s institutional repository, a discipline-specific subject repository, or in some cases directly with a funder’s own designated repository. See CASRAI’s guide on self-archiving for green open access for the practical, step-by-step process.

Worked example

After a journal accepts a manuscript, the corresponding author uploads the accepted manuscript file and its metadata (title, authors, abstract, funder acknowledgment, journal name) into their university’s institutional repository. This act is the deposit; the record may be held privately by the repository, visible immediately, or subject to an embargo depending on the journal’s self-archiving policy.

Counter-example

Simply emailing a colleague a PDF of a manuscript, or posting it to a personal website, is not deposit in this sense — deposit specifically refers to submission into a structured repository system, with accompanying metadata, that can be discovered, tracked, and reported on independently of the author.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does depositing a work make it open access?

Not necessarily. Deposit is the act of submitting a work and its metadata into a repository; whether the result is open, embargoed, or otherwise restricted depends on separate access-status settings and any applicable embargo.

Is “deposit” the same as “self-archiving”?

They are closely related and often used interchangeably — self-archiving generally refers to an author personally depositing their own accepted manuscript, most often for a green open access route.

Which version of a manuscript should be deposited?

This depends on the publisher’s self-archiving policy, but most policies permit only the author accepted manuscript, not the publisher’s final typeset version of record. See document version for the full version chain.