Scholarly Communication and Publishing Issues

What You Can Do: Copyright Guidelines: Contracts for Stanford Authors with Publishers — Things to Consider

Instead of automatically accepting standard publishers’ contracts requiring the transfer of copyright and all rights to the publisher, consider negotiating contracts that permit continued academic use of the work by the creator and his or her university.

The Academic Council Committee on Libraries (C-LIB), in its 2003/04 Annual Report, noted the three following advisory points:

Stanford authors should retain the right to use their published article in whole or in part in any course reader, syllabus or course web site for courses taught by their institution with attribution to the publishing journal
Stanford authors should retain the right to reuse their published article in any derived work with attribution to the publishing journal
Stanford authors should retain the right to mount the published copies of their articles on their personal or departmental web sites with attribution to the publishing journal

Suggested draft language to use in contracts has been developed by several organizations:

The Copyright Management Center at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis has developed an excellent guide, “Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements”. One option suggested by the Center is the following license addendum:

Addendum to Publishing Agreement
Publisher:
Author:
Work:

This addendum modifies the terms of the publishing agreement referenced above. Notwithstanding any term in that agreement to contrary, the parties hereby agree that with respect to the work that:

The Author shall, without limitation, have the right to use, reproduce, distribute, update, create derivatives, and make copies of the work (electronically or in print) in connection with the Author’s teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities.

The Author’s home institution shall, without limitation, have the right to use, reproduce, distribute, and make copies of the work (electronically or in print) in connection with teaching, digital repositories, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities conducted at the Author’s home institution with the Author’s written permission.

(Developed by the Copyright Management Center, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Used with permission.)

Creative Commons provides guidance on the range of options for choosing which rights to retain. Its Choose License page assists in this process and also links further to both “human readable summaries” and the legal code of the full licenses.

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) offers “Copyright Resources for Authors: Practical guidance when submitting journal articles”, which summarizes retaining key rights. It includes “Author’s Addendum to Publication Agreement” (pdf).