Taylor Matters - Summer 2008

Author rights: Stay in control of your work

What are my rights as an author and why would I want to change my rights?

When a journal accepts your article for publication, the rights that you transfer to the publisher are set out in the publication agreement or copyright transfer agreement.
In traditional agreements, all rights are transferred to the journal.

There are many situations where you might want to keep some of your rights. For example, with a traditional copyright agreement, you may not be allowed to:

1. Post your article on your website
2. Post the article to a subject repository
3. Distribute your article to colleagues or students
4. Use parts of your article in later works (e.g., a conference presentation)

How can I make changes to the publication agreement?

Publication agreements are negotiable. Before submitting articles to journals/publishers, you can check online to view their copyright policies using tools such as Sherpa Romeo and Journal Info.

There are resources to help you change the points set forth in the publication agreement. SPARC provides a Canadian Author Addendum that reflects Canadian copyright law, and is structured to allow you to retain your rights as an author. More information: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml

For more information, including other resources to help you modify publication agreements, see the Author Control section of the Scholarly Communication Toolkit (created by the Association of College and Research Libraries).