Scholarly Communication

As an author, you automatically hold copyright of what you write or create. These rights include the ability to reproduce, distribute, adapt, and display or perform a work, as well as the ability to allow others to do any of these things with your work. You retain all of these rights unless and until you sign them away to someone else.

Before publishing your article, a publisher will ask you to sign an agreement. A typical section of that agreement will address these copyrights, stating what rights you will retain (if any) and what rights you will transfer to the publisher (if any). When you transfer your rights, you may restrict what you as the author are allowed to do with your work.

Some rights you may want to retain include the ability to:

• Post it on your personal website
• Distribute copies to your colleagues or students
• Include your article in a course pack for a course you are teaching
• Post the version of record to an institutional repository like ISU ReD, without an embargo period

As the author, you can negotiate your rights, and the Scholarly Communication Team can help you understand how to do so.

Look for the following terms in publishers' copyright transfer agreements:

• Non-exclusive license. The author keeps copyright but grants one or more publishers certain rights, like the ability to publish or translate the article into another language.
• Right of First Publication. This could be an exclusive license that you grant to one publisher, possibly for a limited period of time.
• Embargo. The publisher may allow you to post a particular version of your article to an institutional repository, but they make you wait 6 months or a year before you can do that.
• Version. Take note of which version of the work the agreement references:
  • Pre-print or Manuscript or Submitted Version
  • Post-print or Edited Version or Accepted Version
  • Version of Record or Publisher's PDF or Final Version

A publishing agreement may let you retain rights for one version of your work but not another version. For example, the publisher may let you upload your original manuscript to a repository or your personal website, but not the final publisher's PDF. Here are some common versions of an article:

• A pre-print, or submitted version, is the original manuscript that you submit to a journal. This version has not been through any formal editing or peer-review processes related to the journal. The file is editable, like a MS Word docx.
• A post-print, or accepted version, of your article is still an editable file, but it reflects changes made through the journal's peer-review and editing processes and has been accepted for publication by that journal.
• A publisher's PDF, version of record, or published version, is the final version of the article. This version is what appears in the journal's published issue. It has been through final copyediting and layout, and the file is not readily editable.

For example, here is Elsevier's policy on how and when authors can share these three versions if they have published in an Elsevier journal.

As an author, you may not be sure what rights you've retained for published work or the practical applications of a contract you're preparing to sign. The Scholarly Communication Team will be happy to arrange a consultation to discuss your publication agreement(s); email ISUReD@ilstu.edu to make an appointment. Please be advised that the Team cannot provide legal advice. 

If you have signed away your rights to the publisher, you have a couple options for using your work (the same options for using any copyrighted work).

Fair Use. You can do a fair use analysis by applying the four factors to your work and how you want to use it. 

Ask permission. You (or someone on your behalf) could ask the publisher for permission to use your work in a particular way.

Contact Copyright Librarian Colby Cilento if you have any questions on how to use your copyrighted materials.

There are several tools authors can use to determine a publisher's rights policy for authors. 

• Here is the profile for Journal of Academic Librarianship. JAL is a gated journal published by Elsevier.
• Here is the profile for College & Research Libraries. C&RL is an open-access journal published by the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Publisher Website. Many publishers will provide information on their website about their copyright policies, which can be more straightforward than Jisc Open Policy Finder:

• Here is an example of Elsevier's Copyright Policy. (Elsevier publishes The Journal of Academic Librarianship.)
• Here is a copyright policy for the open-access journal College & Research Libraries.

Copyright Transfer Agreement. The publisher's agreement itself that you sign is probably the most accurate reflection of what rights you have for that article. After you sign an agreement, it is a good idea to store the file somewhere/by some method that lets you access it even years later.

• Here is an example agreement for a gated Elsevier journal. 
• Here is an example agreement for the open-access journal College & Research Libraries.