Overview
When your article is accepted in a journal, the publisher's standard publishing agreement often asks you to sign away your copyright, limiting your own use and limiting access for others. You are your own copyright holder until and unless you sign over your rights in a publisher agreement. The resources on this page can help empower you during this process so that you retain key rights to your intellectual property.
SPARC Author Addendum
More Resources for Authors
- Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship This Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship has been prepared to facilitate the publication of open access books, including accommodating new types of long-form, multimodal digital scholarship. In order to ensure this contract meets the needs of both authors and publishers, we completed a process of soliciting feedback from authors, publishers, and other interested stakeholders.
- Author's Alliance Fair Use For Nonfiction Authors The guide is designed to empower nonfiction authors to exercise their right to incorporate source materials into their writings by helping them to make confident fair use decisions. Inspired by the codes of best practices in fair use pioneered by Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide, the guide focuses on best practices in fair use for nonfiction authors based on community practice and existing case law. The guide addresses three common situations faced by nonfiction authors in which fair use may apply: 1) criticizing, discussing, or commenting on copyrighted material; 2) using copyrighted material to support a point made in the author’s work; and 3) using copyrighted material for non-consumptive research. It also addresses the most frequently asked questions about fair use and clears up some common misconceptions about when it might apply.
Know Your Rights: Copyright and Self-Archiving 101
Check Sherpa-Romeo to view publisher copyright and self-archiving policies before you submit.
When signing a publisher's agreement, use the following resources for securing copyright to your own intellectual output:
- SPARC Author Addendum Agreement empowers you to secure your own copyright.
- Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
Consider a Creative Commons License for your work. Creative Commons licenses allow you to retain your copyright but share your work widely. They are also free and easy for others to interpret how your work can be used, reused, remixed, modified, and shared.