Scholarly Communication

Authors are automatically granted exclusive rights to their creative works. However, authors often sign away those copyrights when they sign publication agreements. This loss of rights can prevent authors from sharing their work in institutional repositories and even from publicly displaying their work or distributing their work in class. In addition, while authors are often stripped of their ownership, publishers are granted more rights, including the ability to reuse authors' works without permission or notice. However, this does not have to be the case. Refer to the links below to learn how you can keep your copyrights throughout the publication process.

Many publication agreements limit authors' access to their own creative works. If such cases, authors should reach out to the publisher to modify the publication agreement. An email asking to retain all or some copyright access may work, or you may prefer to submit an author addendum to the publisher. To help with this, SPARC, in coordination with the Creative Commons and Science Commons, developed an author addendum that modifies and supplements publisher’s agreement and allows authors to maintain retention of rights, including the acknowledgment of prior license grants. Authors may use the addendum as is or they may select certain individual rights to include or exclude.

Download the Authors Alliance’s guide to Understanding and Negotiating Publication Contracts to learn more.

Are you interested in renegotiating a contract to regain your copyrights? Download these books from the Authors Alliance to learn more: