The University of Iowa Libraries

Transforming Scholarly Communication
Scholars taking control of the scholarly communication and publication system to maximize dissemination of research

Increase the Impact of Your Research & Participate in the Evolution of Scholarly Publishing

What You Can Do  | Sample Publication Agreements  |  Publishing Decisions

Retaining Rights Helps Your Research – What You Can Do

At a minimum: Transfer Copyrights But Reserve Some Rights

Negotiating changes to the standard contract before publication can help authors retain rights, thus increasing options for authors as well as readership, citation, and impact of the work itself.  Before signing, strikeout and modify language of the publishing contract by changing the contract from granting "exclusive" rights to the publisher to granting "non-exclusive" rights to the publisher. Initial the changes and submit a signed copy to the publisher. In many cases, publishers will accept changed contracts.

Ideally: Keep Copyrights and Transfer Limited Rights to the Publisher

Option One: Cross out the original exclusive transfer language in the publication contract that your publisher provides and replace it with text such as the following:
“The author grants to the Publisher exclusive first publication rights in the Work, and further grants a non-exclusive license for other uses of the Work for the duration of its copyright in all languages, throughout the world, in all media. The Publisher shall include a notice in the Work saying "© [Author's Name]". Readers of this article may copy it without the copyright owner's permission, if the author and publisher are acknowledged in the copy and copy is used for educational, not-for-profit purposes.”

Option Two: Use the University of Iowa Authors Addendum. This provides you with the additional opportunity to grant other rights to the public - such as the freedom to use the work for non-commercial purposes provided attribution is given - which fosters further use and impact of your work.

Option Three: The Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work. When you choose a license, CC provides you with tools and tutorials that let you add license information to your own site, or to one of several free hosting services that have incorporated Creative Commons.

Submit work to publishers with enlightened copyright policies

Many publishers are liberalizing their policies to help achieve a balance between their interests and those of their authors. The UK’s SHERPA/RoMEO project provides data about the copyright policies of 95 major scholarly publishers.

Examples of Publisher Copyright/Publication Agreements:

• American Physical Society
  copyright is transferred but clear and extensive rights are retained by the author

• Cambridge Univeristy Press, American Political Science Association (Copyright Agreement)
  exclusive copyright is transferred to the publisher

• Blackwell Publishing, Society for Applied Physiology (Exclusive License Form)
  exclusive copyright is transferred to the publisher
  

• Elsevier (Sample Copyright Transfer Agreement)
  copyright is transferred but some rights are retained by the author
  

• Nature Publishing (License to Publish)
  allows copyright to remain with the author
  
  
• London Mathematical Society (Publication Agreement)
  allows copyright to remain with the author
  
  
• Public Library of Science (PLoS) (Open Access License)
  author retains copyright under Creative Commons license
  

• Rockefeller University Press, Journal of Experimental Medicine (Copyright Policy/Provisional License to Publish)
  author retains copyright under Creative Commons license
  

Exert Your Influence through Publishing Decisions

Open access articles offer greater impact than those gated behind subscription barriers. There are several options for making your research more widely available:

• Consider publishing in an open access journal.
  
  The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) offers a list of free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in a broad array of disciplines. Select “For authors” to see the various open access options available.
  
  
• Choose an open access option in a traditional journal that has become “hybrid,” giving the author the option to pay for an individual article to be open access.
  
  
• Include your work in Iowa Research Online or one of the discipline-based repositories.
  
  
• Consider publishing in a more cost-effective journal, which you can find by searching in a database that allows you to check the relative cost and value of a journal as assessed by a formula developed by an Economist at the University of California Santa Barbara, Ted Bergstrom.
  
  
• Consider publishing in an alternative journal; such journals are lower cost and offer publishing models that encourage broad distribution and reuse of content.
  
  
• Consider serving on editorial boards or as reviewer for a cost-friendly or open access journal.
  
  
• Consider starting an alternative or open access journal:
  
  Open Access Journal Business Guides from the Budapest Initiative.
  
  Chemistry Central and BioMed Central offer services to researchers to start independent, open access journals.
  
  Iowa Orthopaedic Journal is a locally published open access journal.
  
  Journal of e-Media Studies is one of four open access, peer-reviewed journals published by Dartmouth.

For more information on what faculty and researchers can do, see the Association of Research Libraries’ Create Change site.