How to Check a Journal’s Self-Archiving Policy with Open Policy Finder (Sherpa Romeo)

Before depositing a manuscript in a repository, an author needs to know exactly what a journal or publisher permits: which version of the paper can be shared, where, and after how long a wait. The tool most people still reach for by its old name, Sherpa Romeo, has been rebranded Open Policy Finder and is operated by Jisc, the UK higher-education digital infrastructure organisation. This guide walks through what the tool is called today, how to search it, how to read a policy record, and how to turn that record into a concrete deposit decision.

What Is Open Policy Finder (Formerly Sherpa Romeo)?

Open Policy Finder is a free, searchable database of publisher and journal self-archiving policies, alongside funder open-access requirements. It grew out of a set of related SHERPA services first developed in the mid-2000s at the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research Communications, the best known of which was SHERPA/RoMEO — the archiving-policy database most authors still refer to by name. Those services (RoMEO for publisher/journal policies, Juliet for funder policies, and OpenDOAR as a directory of repositories) have since been consolidated and rebranded under the single Open Policy Finder platform, run today by Jisc. Because the old name persists so heavily in library guides, citation tools, and researcher habit, you will see the tool referred to both ways — as Open Policy Finder and as Sherpa Romeo — often in the same sentence. They are the same service.

The practical point for an author is unchanged by the rebrand: this is the standard first stop for checking what a journal’s publisher will let you do with your own manuscript before you deposit a copy anywhere — an institutional repository, a subject repository, or a personal or lab website.

How to Search for a Journal’s Policy

The search interface accepts several ways of finding the same record, so use whichever you have on hand:

• Journal title — type the full or partial name; the tool will suggest matches as you type, which matters because many journal titles are shared or near-duplicated across publishers.
• ISSN — the most reliable lookup if you have it, since it removes any ambiguity between similarly named journals or between a journal’s print and electronic ISSN.
• Publisher name — useful when you want to see a publisher’s general self-archiving stance, or when a specific journal record can’t be found and you need to check whether the publisher has a house-wide default policy instead.

A search can return more than one plausible match, particularly for common journal titles or where a journal has changed publisher. Open the specific record and check the ISSN and publisher name against your actual paper before relying on it — a mismatched record is the single most common way authors end up applying the wrong policy.

How to Read a Policy Record: What Each Field Means

A policy record breaks the question “can I share this paper?” into several distinct fields, because the answer is genuinely different depending on which version of the manuscript you mean and where you intend to put it. The core fields you’ll see are:

• Submitted version (preprint) — the manuscript as originally submitted, before peer review. Some publishers permit sharing this version at any time, including before acceptance; others restrict it or require a link to the eventual published version once available.
• Accepted manuscript (postprint / Author Accepted Manuscript, AAM) — the version that has been through peer review and been revised accordingly, but has not yet had the publisher’s copyediting, layout, and typesetting applied. This is usually the version that matters most for funder compliance, and the one most publishers attach conditions and embargoes to. See CASRAI’s Author Accepted Manuscript and Postprint definitions for how these terms are used elsewhere on this site.
• Published version (Version of Record) — the publisher’s final typeset PDF or HTML. Very few subscription publishers permit self-archiving this version without a paid open-access route; where it is allowed, it is usually tied to a specific licence and, again, often an embargo.
• Embargo period — how long after formal publication an author must wait before depositing the relevant version in a repository. Where a policy record shows an embargo, it applies to a specific version (almost always the accepted manuscript), not necessarily to all of them.
• Conditions — the qualifying language that determines whether the general policy actually applies to your situation: for example, that a specific repository type is required (institutional vs. subject vs. personal website), that a link to the published article must be included, that a particular licence statement must accompany the deposited copy, or that the policy differs for funded work.
• Licence — where a publisher specifies reuse terms for a self-archived copy (for example a Creative Commons licence), the record will show it. This is separate from, and can be more restrictive than, whatever licence applies to the formally published open-access version of an article.

Read the record for the specific version you actually have in hand (usually the accepted manuscript straight out of peer review) rather than skimming the whole entry — a policy that looks permissive for preprints can still carry a long embargo, or additional conditions, for the accepted manuscript.

What Happened to the Green/Blue/Yellow/White Colour Codes?

Long-time users of Sherpa Romeo will remember a colour-coded classification — green, blue, yellow, and white — used to summarise a publisher’s overall self-archiving stance at a glance (broadly, green meaning the most permissive policies and white meaning none formally supported). That single-colour summary has been superseded: the modern interface presents the same underlying information as explicit per-version fields (submitted, accepted, published, each with its own conditions and embargo) rather than collapsing a journal’s whole policy into one letter-grade colour. If you encounter the colour terminology in an older library guide, citation tool, or a colleague’s notes, treat it as shorthand for the general shape of a policy, and check the current record’s version-by-version fields for the actual current terms rather than relying on a remembered colour category.

The term “green open access” itself has outlasted the colour-coding system and remains standard terminology for self-archiving in a repository, as distinct from gold, hybrid, or diamond open access. See CASRAI’s comparison of Gold vs Green vs Diamond vs Hybrid Open Access if you need the broader distinction between OA routes.

Step-by-Step: Checking Before You Deposit a Manuscript

1. Identify which version you have. Before searching anything, confirm whether the file in front of you is your submitted manuscript, your peer-reviewed accepted manuscript, or the publisher’s final typeset version. This determines which field in the policy record actually applies to you.
2. Search Open Policy Finder by ISSN if you have it, or by exact journal title. Confirm the record matches your journal’s publisher and current ISSN before reading further — publishers and imprints change, and an outdated match will give you the wrong terms.
3. Read the field for your specific version — not the record as a whole. Note the embargo length (if any) and any conditions attached (repository type, required link-back, required licence statement).
4. Check whether a funder mandate overrides the publisher’s default embargo. Some funders now require zero-embargo deposit of the accepted manuscript regardless of what the publisher’s own self-archiving policy would otherwise allow — see the funder overlay section below. Where a funder mandate and a publisher embargo conflict, the funder’s contractual requirement on you as a grant recipient generally takes precedence for that funded work.
5. Cross-check against the publisher’s own author-rights or self-archiving page if the terms matter for a compliance deadline. Aggregator records are compiled from publisher policies and can occasionally lag a publisher’s current wording; when the two disagree, the publisher’s own current policy is authoritative.
6. Deposit into the repository type the policy actually names — typically your institutional repository, though some policies distinguish institutional from subject-specific or personal-website archiving with different terms for each. CASRAI’s Institutional Repository and Embargo definitions cover the underlying terminology if any of it is unfamiliar.

For the full mechanics of the deposit itself — choosing a repository, adding metadata, and setting an embargo date correctly once you know the permitted terms — see CASRAI’s companion guide, Self-Archiving Research Papers for Green Open Access: A Practical How-To. This page focuses specifically on how to find and correctly read the policy itself; that guide covers the end-to-end deposit workflow it feeds into.

Funder Overlay Policies: When a Funder’s Terms Override the Publisher

Open Policy Finder also aggregates funder open-access requirements (the former SHERPA/Juliet function), which matters because a funder mandate can require deposit terms stricter than what a journal’s own policy would otherwise permit. Two current examples worth checking against directly if either applies to your funding:

• The NIH Public Access Policy requires NIH-funded Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025 to be deposited in PubMed Central with zero embargo, made publicly available at the article’s official publication date — regardless of the publisher’s own embargo period.
• NSF has adopted a comparable zero-embargo requirement for NSF-funded Author Accepted Manuscripts deposited in NSF-PAR, applying to awards made on or after January 22, 2026.

Where your funding source has its own public-access policy, check it directly rather than assuming the journal’s Open Policy Finder record is the final word — a publisher’s stated embargo is what applies in the absence of an overriding funder requirement, not a ceiling the funder mandate can’t exceed.

When Open Policy Finder and the Publisher Disagree

Aggregator databases are compiled and periodically updated from publisher-supplied policy information, which means there can be a lag between a publisher changing its actual policy and that change being reflected in the record. For a routine deposit with no compliance deadline at stake, the aggregated record is generally reliable enough to act on. Where a specific embargo date or condition is going to determine whether you meet a funder’s compliance deadline, it’s worth the extra few minutes to check the publisher’s own author-rights or self-archiving policy page directly, since that is the authoritative source if the two disagree.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Open Policy Finder still called Sherpa Romeo?

The tool has been rebranded Open Policy Finder, consolidating the former SHERPA/RoMEO, SHERPA/Juliet, and OpenDOAR services into one platform operated by Jisc. “Sherpa Romeo” remains in very wide informal use for the same tool, and both names point to the same underlying database.

Is Open Policy Finder free to use?

Yes. It is a publicly accessible search tool; no account or subscription is required to look up a journal or funder’s policy.

Does a green self-archiving policy mean I can post my paper on ResearchGate or Academia.edu?

Not necessarily. Most publisher self-archiving policies are specific about permitted repository types — commonly institutional or subject repositories — and commercial academic social networks are frequently treated differently, or excluded, in the conditions field of the policy record. Check the conditions field rather than assuming a favourable version/embargo answer covers every possible location.

What if my journal or publisher isn’t listed?

Not every journal, especially very small or new ones, has a record in the database. In that case, go directly to the publisher’s or journal’s own author guidelines or copyright transfer agreement for its self-archiving terms, since that is the authoritative source in any case.

Does the policy record cover book chapters or conference papers, not just journal articles?

Open Policy Finder’s core database is built around journal and publisher policies. Coverage of other output types is more limited; if your output is a book chapter, monograph, or conference paper, check the specific publisher’s or venue’s own self-archiving terms directly rather than assuming a journal-focused record applies.

For the broader landscape of open-access routes and terminology this fits into, see CASRAI’s Scholarly Publishing pillar page, and the Open Access Publishing: Models, Mandates, and Why It Matters guide.