In fact, institutional repositories as DSpace ISS, which adopt standard protocols to encode metadata, make online search engines able to capture their data thus enabling the harvesting process to disseminate contents on the net. Author’s publishing practice and find more rights in a traditional journal system What is a scientist supposed to do once his/her paper has been published in a journal? He/she, as the intellectual owner of his/her creative work, as well as the institution which has provided all the products and services required to support the scientist’s work,

are totally alienated from their own “”creation”". In contrast with all the laws regulating economy, the costs needed to product the goods are separated from profit. Not only the intellectual product is given away for free together with the all relating rights, but in

many cases a journal may charge authors DAPT with publication fees. The assignment of copyright is required by 69% of publishers before the peer-review process, in which the publisher adds value to the scientific output. In this respect, it should be remembered that the referees too, in most cases, provide their advice for free. 15% of publishers even claim: “”I reject your submission and do not grant permission to publish your work elsewhere”". While 90% of publishers require the total assignment of rights, 6% claim for

exclusive licenses and just 4% agree to subscribe for non-exclusive licenses [3]. This means that neither the author nor the institution are allowed to make papers freely accessible online, for example, by posting it on their own website or in a digital repository. They cannot even provide copies of the work to students during a course and not even the authors can share the work among colleagues. In addition to that, every single part of the article (i. e. mafosfamide tables or figures) cannot be reused by the authors without the permission from the publisher. The only way for both the author and institution to get access to the work is represented by the payment of a high-cost subscription to the journal in which the article appears. In this regard, if the subscription to Brain research is considered, it should be noticed that the amount to be paid in 1983 was 2,100 US dollars, while currently the charged subscription is over 20,000 US dollars. These costs are particularly burdensome for the less developed countries [3]. It often happens that libraries pay an institutional subscription in order to offer to its internal research staff free access to a collection of journals. But only the library is granted the permission, against the grain, from reluctant publishers to provide journal articles on exchange basis with other libraries.