Retaining rights when publishing journal papers
A short while ago I posted an item about the concerns authors have when asked to deposit their final accepted draft manuscripts in their institutional repository. In that post, I outlined some reasons why it is a good thing, a safe thing, and increasingly a necessary thing to do, as well as discussing the possibility of open access publishing as a means for those who only wish to see the publisher’s PDF version out there in the public domain.
It has only just occurred to me, having had this discussion again with one of our academics here at the OU, that I should also have mentioned another potential route to open access: retaining rights at the copyright agreement stage.
Most authors of journal papers (perhaps through loyalty to, or fear of, their publisher) will sign a form upon acceptance of their paper, transferring copyright to the publisher, without a second thought. By doing this, the author is then bound by the terms of that agreement, which typically provides very limited rights to the author for reproduction, redistribution, and public disemination of the article.
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have an addendum that can be printed, signed, and attached to the copyright transfer agreement which the publisher sends you. Assuming the publisher agrees to the addendum (i.e. signs it), the author(s) then retain much broader rights over any version of that paper, including being able to deposit the final published version in their institutional repository.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
The following is the Springer Copyright Agreement:
Copyright Transfer Statement
The copyright to this article is transferred to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC (respective to owner if other than Springer and for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable) effective if and when the article is accepted for publication. The author warrants that his/her contribution is original and that he/she has full power to make this grant. The author signs for and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of any and all co-authors. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online) or any other reproductions of similar nature.
An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and or in his/her institutional repository. He/she may also deposit this version on his/her funder’s or funder’s designated repository at the funder’s request or as a result of a legal obligation, provided it is not made publicly available until 12 months after official publication. He/ she may not use the publisher’s PDF version, which is posted on http://www.springerlink.com, for the purpose of self-archiving or deposit. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer’s website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: “The original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com“.
The author is requested to use the appropriate DOI for the article. Articles disseminated via http://www.springerlink.com are indexed, abstracted and referenced by many abstracting and information services, bibliographic networks, subscription agencies, library networks, and consortia.
After submission of this agreement signed by the corresponding author, changes of authorship or in the order of the authors listed will not be accepted by Springer.
I feel that the phrase
An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and or in his/her institutional repository.
is sufficient for my (and OU’s) purposes.
Do you agree?
June 29th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Allan,
It is sufficient if you are happy depositing the final peer-reviewed and accepted draft manuscript in ORO. This is what Springer refer to as the “author-created version”. Most people are perfectly happy to do this, and there is certainly nothing wrong with this approach. The only differences between this and the final version as it appears in the journal should be minor corrections of English and the layout of the paper.
However, some people (and particularly in non-science disciplines, it seems to me) are less happy about making the final draft version publicly available. They would prefer to make the final “publisher PDF version” available Open Access. One approach to achieving this is to use an addendum to the copyright transfer agreement in an attempt to retain additional rights over this final version.
Colin
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:30 am
Thanks for this. My final version is OK for me (although of course I would have preferred the Publisher’s PDF version).
What you and I did not mention was that Springer (perhaps other publishers too) allows Open Source Publication on payment of a large fee (three thousand dollars!). I of course turned this option down; do you know if anyone has taken this up – and is there any case of the OU stumping up for this privilege?
July 6th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Allan,
See my earlier blog post “Should universities provide funds for open access publishing?” (http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/ORO/?p=19).
Thanks,
Colin