Scholarly Communication Toolkit

Scholars Have Lost Control of the Process

The original intents of publishing in peer-reviewed scholarly journals include sharing scholarship, establishing priority in making discoveries, and initiating conversations among scholars. Such publication has now become a tenure requirement for faculty in many disciplines. It is also a strong path toward receiving recognition and gaining prestige. These pressures have created a system where faculty typically sign away all rights to their scholarship in exchange for publication.

• Scholars who sign away all rights can find themselves requesting permission from publishers to place their own articles on a personal web site, in a course pack or an institutional repository, or to distribute copies to colleagues.
• Scholars create the content (articles) and provide editing and peer review. In general, publishers receive both content and quality control at no cost. This contributes to the fact that some commercial publishers post large profits – up to 40% in some cases.
• Academic libraries then purchase back this content, including that which may have originated with their own faculty. Libraries face tremendous pressure to continue providing access to “core journals” in every discipline represented on a campus – regardless of price.

Managing Your Copyrights

• Copyright law gives the creator of copyrighted works exclusive rights, including principally:
  • to reproduce the work in copies (e.g., through photocopying),
  • to distribute copies of the work;
  • to prepare translations or other derivative works,
  • to perform or display the work publicly;
  • to authorize others to exercise any of these rights.
• Your works are protected by copyright as soon as you fix them in a tangible medium, including electronic media.
• Many higher education institutions allow scholar creators to retain copyright in traditional academic publications. You should, however, be familiar with the intellectual property policy at your institution. The CopyOwn web site is a good resource on copyright ownership for the higher education community and includes links to policies for many AAU/ARL institutions.

• When you write an article for a scholarly journal, you are typically asked to sign a publication agreement or a copyright transfer agreement. The purpose of this document is to transfer your ownership of copyright to the publisher.
• Copyright is a bundle or package of the rights cited above. Scholars (creators) can “unbundle” these rights and transfer only some of them to publishers. For example:
  • the creator transfers ownership of the copyright, but retains the right to do certain things like include articles in course packs, or place articles on a personal web site or an institutional repository.
  • the creator retains ownership of the copyright and grants a non-exclusive license to the publisher, typically for the right of first formal publication

Model Copyright and Publishing Agreements

Following are several web sites providing sample publishing agreements that unbundle rights. Authors can suggest these as alternatives to standard publisher agreements. These web sites do not substitute for legal advice.

Creative Commons is an organization devoted to building a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules. Their first project was the release of a set of copyright licenses for public use. This link leads to a web application that helps creators retain their copyright while licensing works as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Both the Public Library of Science (PloS) and BioMed Central use open access agreements drawn from Creative Commons licenses.

The Copyright Management Center,Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, offers five simple steps for Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements.

North Carolina State University provides some model language at Retaining Rights to Use Your Works: Copyright Challenges for Faculty.

The Association of American Law Schools has crafted a Model Author/Journal Agreement in which the copyright stays with the author.

The Nature Publishing Group has a new license that allows copyright to remain with the author, as does the London Mathematical Society.

The journal Evolutionary Ecology Research allows authors to retain copyright. Authors who publish here must agree to allow their works to be used freely for non-commercial purposes.

Professor Stuart M. Shieber from Harvard College maintains a page with two sample copyright assignments intended for use by authors in providing publishers the right to publish scholarly journal articles. The first transfers rights to the publisher, retaining noncommercial rights to distribute. The second transfers only a nonexclusive right to publish in a journal, retaining all other rights.

The American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics agreements transfer copyright ownership from the author to the publisher, but the author retains the right to do certain things such as post articles on a personal web site or make copies for classroom purposes.

The University of Kansas provides recommended language for manuscript contracts that faculty can insert to reserve the right to use works at the institution, even if copyright is assigned to the publisher.

Learn More: General Information For Managing Copyrights

Seizing the Moment: Scientists' Authorship Rights in the Digital Age is a report, prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, calling for authors to use their leverage to negotiate licensing agreements that maximize access to and dissemination of their work.

The SHERPA web site summarizes permissions (by publisher) that are normally given as part of a publisher's copyright transfer agreement. These are publishers that typically want authors to transfer copyright, but the publisher automatically allows some rights to remain with the author. These are the default policies and changes or exceptions can often be negotiated by authors.

You and Your Copyrights: Securing, Managing, and Sharing the Legal Rights, Copyright Management Center, Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis. This site provides more basic information on copyright, including a discussion of works-made-for-hire, those works that were created by an employee in the scope of his or her employment, and therefore belong to the employer.

Copyright Management for Scholarship: Key Issues & Good Practices: Agreements is a checklist of points to consider when entering into publishing agreements, created by the Zwolle Group, an international working group on copyright in academe.

Johns Hopkins provides a tool that offers Hopkins authors data on journals and publishers. Their goal is to help authors find publishers that support the free exchange of information through author-friendly policies, and are cost competitive.