Assigning copyright

It is important to consider carefully any publisher's agreement or contract before you sign it, as you may be giving away rights unnecessarily. Publishing your work often requires you to assign your copyright to someone else, usually a publisher. Unless otherwise negotiated, if you assign the copyright in your work to a publisher, you may lose all copyrights. In fact, you may later find yourself in a position where you must seek copyright clearance from the publisher in order to use your work elsewhere, such as in your teaching, and you may even be required to pay a fee for that use.

You should ask your legal advisor to check the terms and conditions of any publishing contract before you sign, and make sure you understand the implications of these terms.

A useful starting point to find out about current default publishers' copyright transfer agreements is available at SHERPA RoMEO.  Authors wanting to find out how to go about retaining some rights when they publish, will find advice at SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition.

Any publishing contracts you have previously signed should be kept on file - ask your publisher for a copy. If you wish to use your work in a new way, such as include it in the University's Institutional Research Repository or other emerging forms of online scholarly publishing, you will need to check the terms and conditions of the contract. It may be that you need to ask the publisher for permission for this new use.

Note: Moral rights remain with a creator, even if copyright has been assigned to someone else.

Scenario:

Upon acceptance of a paper, a publisher requests the author complete and sign a copyright transfer agreement. The publisher who now has all copyright rights, may make the paper 'all rights reserved'. In this scenario, the author may have been granted some re-use rights in the copyright transfer agreement. Alternatively, the publisher as copyright owner may make the paper available as Open Access, under a Creative Commons licence. In this scenario, the author would have re-use rights in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons licence, as well as any other re-use rights stated in the copyright transfer agreement.

Example: Copyright assignment

Using the sample Wiley copyright transfer agreement, note:

Clause A. Copyright
1. The Contributor assigns to the Owner, during the full term of copyright and any extensions or renewals, all copyright in and to the contribution, and all rights therein, including but not limited to the right to publish, republish, transmit, sell, distribute and otherwise use the Contribution in whole or in part...

Clause C. Permitted uses by Contributor
The contributor is granted certain rights back by the publisher to use different versions of the article for different purposes:

1. Submitted/pre-print version can be included in, for example, a not for profit subject-based preprint server or repository, or institutional repository (RUNE)
2. Accepted version can be included in, for example, an institutional repository (RUNE), not for profit subject-based repositories - subject to an embargo
3. Final published version can be used, for example, to make copies for colleagues, teaching duties.

See the sample Wiley copyright transfer agreement for more information.