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Faculty Support: Research and Publishing

Publication Rights

Author Rights

As an author, you are also a copyright holder. It's important for you to know what rights you control for your work. As the author, you have the exclusive right to copy, distribute or perform your work, unless you give your permission to someone else in a signed agreement. In order to publish your article, all the publisher needs is your permission, yet standard publisher agreements transfer all of your rights to the publisher. You don't have to accept it, as the owner of your own intellectual property.

Attaching an addendum to the publisher agreement is an easy method for authors to use to selectively retain control of their work.

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Journal Publication Models

Historically journal publishers selected the best articles submitted to advance their journal's reputation and readership. Acceptance rates were low and it was a publisher's market. Today, with rising patronage of open access journals as well as vanity publishing or author-pays models, the choices are broader.  Journals should be carefully reviewed to determine quality, publication fees, and any limitations on author's publication rights.  

Typically, once your article is reviewed and accepted for publication you will be asked to sign a standard agreement that transfers all or most of your copyright rights to the publisher.  This means you no longer hold rights for sharing your own work with others. You may no longer be able to place the publication on web sites, copy it for others, deposit it in a public online archive, or reuse portions in your own modification of the original work.  Be prepared to negotiate your rights.

Book Publication Models

Similarly to journals, publishers may vary in quality, publication fees, and limitation of author's publication (copyright) rights.  Investigate the publisher's website to assess any impact to your publication rights.  Be prepared to negotiate.

 

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Author Rights

This brief video, produced by the Institute on Scholarly Communication in association with SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), explains how researchers can maximize exposure and dissemination for their peer-reviewed article manuscripts.


Visit our Wilson Libguide on copyright  for more information.