Author's Rights Library Seminar at Iowa State University Spring 2010

1. Author’s Rights
H. Stephen McMinn

2. Discussion Topic
 Your Rights as an Author
 General Rules
 NIH Rules
 Publishers Copyright Transfer Agreements
 What they contain
 What to look for
 Protecting Your Rights
 Sample Letters/Amendments

3. Your Rights
 What can you do with your article?
 Publish on your website
 Photocopy and pass out on street corners
 Use in your course
 Post to Subject Repositories
 Submit to Journals
 Tear up into little pieces and use for confetti
 May depend on Funding Source!

4. Important Rights
 To publish/distribute work in print or other
media
 To Reproduce/Copy
 Prepare Translations or Derivative Works
 To perform or display the work publicly
 To authorize others to have any of these
rights – ability to transfer rights

5. Rights
 Make copies of the work for educational use, including
class notes, study guides or electronic reserves
 Send copies of the work to colleagues
 Present the work at conference or meeting and give
copies of the work to attendees
 Deposit the work in an institutional or funding agency
repository or other digital repository
 Post the work on a laboratory or institutional web site
on a restricted network or publicly available network

6. Derivative Works
 Use part of the work as a basis for a future
publication
 Use excerpts in other works such as tables from an
article into a book chapter
 Use a different or extended version of the work for a
future publication, dissertation, or thesis
 Use the work in a compilation of works or collected
works
 Expand the work into a book form or book chapter

7. NIH Public Access Policy
The NIH Public Access Policy implements Division G, Title II, Section
218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008). The
law states:
The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that
all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted
for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central
an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts
upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available
no later than 12 months after the official date of publication:
Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access
policy in a manner consistent with copyright law

8. NIH Rules
 In Brief
 NIH-funded research must be made available to
the public
 Deposit made publicly available no later than 12
months after the official date of publication
 submit an electronic copy of their published
articles to NIH PubMed Central
 NIH Public Access Policy @
http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

10. Publishers Copyright Transfer Agreements
• Background/Definitions/Historic
• Questions to consider
– What rights are your giving up
– What rights are important to you
– How important are these rights
• Open access
• Gov Regulations
• Personal Preferences
• What to look for in agreements

11. Definitions
 Pre-print: Manuscript as submitted by the
author for peer review.
 Post-print: Manuscript that includes changes
made by the author as a result of the peer
review process.
 Final Publisher Version: The publishers’ final
version of the manuscript and is different from
the post-print version, due to layout, pagination,
location of graphics, etc.

12. Historic Practice
 Continuing to transfer ownership of copyright
to publishers in exchange for publication
despite the restrictions it places on your
works
 Therefore you would need to obtain
permission to do all the rights you
transferred……

13. Potential Legal Problems
In 2005, the Association of American Publishers (AAP)
threatened the University of California-San Diego
with a lawsuit over UCSD’s e-reserves program,
which allows the posting of password-protected
articles written by UCSD faculty for use by their
students
“Legal battle brews over availability of texts on online reserve at
U. of California Library” by Scott Carson. The Chronicle of
Higher Education – April 22, 2005

14. Questions to Consider
• What rights are your giving up
• What rights are important to you
• How important are these rights, items to consider..
• Gov Regulations – NIH
• University Guidelines
• Open access
• Personal Preferences

15. Interpreting Agreements
 What to look for….
– Posting to websites
– Using in course packs
– Using in other works
– Placing in Institutional or Subject Repositories
– Allowed methods of sharing
– Permissions statement

16. Examples
 Elsevier
 ACS
 Oxford
University Press
 Thieme
Publishing
 Sherpa/Romeo

17. Elsevier (Green)
 On authors personal or authors institutions
website or server
 Self-archiving of author manuscripts into a
subject based repository (e.g. PMC, UKPMC) is
prohibited
 Published source must be acknowledged
 Must link to journal home page or articles' DOI

18. Elsevier (Green)
 Publisher's version/PDF cannot be used
 Articles in some journals can be made Open
Access on payment of additional charge
 NIH Authors articles will be submitted to PMC
after 12 months
 Authors who are required to deposit in
subject repositories should use Sponsorship
Option - See note below about NIH authors

19. American Chemical Society (White)
 The author may post on the web the title of
their paper, abstract (no other text), tables
and figures on their own web site
 NIH funded authors may post articles to
PubMed Central 12 months after publication
 May link to publisher version

20. Oxford University Press (Yellow)
 Pre-print can only be posted prior to acceptance, must be
accompanied by set statement and must not be replaced with
post-print (link to published version with amended statement)
 Publisher version cannot be used except for Nucleic Acids
Research articles
 Published source must be acknowledged
 Must link to publisher version
 Set phrase to accompany archived copy (see policy)
 Articles in some journals can be made Open Access on
payment of additional charge
 Publisher will deposit on behalf of NIH funded authors to
PubMed Central

22. New Landscape for Authors
 Retain all of some of your Rights – 2 Options
Retain only the Specific Rights You Need
 Right to use/copy for educational purposes
 Right to post to your website
 Right to re-use your own work in another work
But otherwise transfer copyright to publisher
OR
Retain all Rights and License Specific Rights to
the Publisher such as right of 1st publication

23. Retaining Your Rights
 History
 Policies
 Faculty Senate Resolutions
 Methods
 Choosing “friendly” publishers
 Editing current agreements
 Attaching an amendment statement to existing
agreements

24. Finding Friendly Publishers
 The Romeo/eprints directory provides
information on the self-archiving policy of
journals
 Uses a 4 Color Breakdown for Open Access
Rights – Green (best) to White (worst)
 DOJA -- Directory of Open Access Journals
 Scholarly Communications
 Ask a Librarian

25. Methods to Retain Rights
 Attach an addendum to the publishing
agreement which expressly sets forth the
rights retained by the author.
 Strike out the parts of the agreement that you
wish to modify
 Insert in the text of the agreement the rights
they wish to retain.

26. Editing Agreement
 Insert in the text of the agreement the rights
they wish to retain.
 The following is an example:
“If there are any elements in this manuscript for which the
author(s) hold and want to retain copyright, please
specify: __________________________.”
[Physical Therapy, Journal of the American Physical
Therapy Association]

27. Editing Agreement
 Strike out wording
 crossing out the specific clauses that you do not
agree with and inserting by hand the rights you
wish to retain.
 Review the publisher’s agreement form for….
“SIGN HERE FOR COPYRIGHT TRANSFER: I hereby
certify that I am authorized to sign this document either
in my own right or as an agent for my employer, and
have made no changes to the current valid
document. . .”

28. Editing Agreements
 Any changes made directly on the form
agreement must include….
 the initials of the author and the initials of an
authorized representative of the publisher, which
are placed immediately adjacent to the
handwritten or typewritten change.
 Any changes made and initialed by the author will
have no legal effect without the approval of the
publisher.

29. NIH Example
Add the following to a copyright agreement
“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the
right to provide a copy of the final peer-reviewed
manuscript to the NIH upon acceptance for
Journal publication, for public archiving in
PubMed Central as soon as possible but no later
than 12 months after publication by Journal.”

30. Amendments to Agreements
 An addendum is an attachment to a contract
or form that modifies, clarifies, or adds to the
contract.
 If authors attach an addendum, add the
statement “Subject to Attached Addendum”
next to your signature on the publisher
copyright agreement form.
 Lots of Examples of Amendments

31. Amendments
 Creative Commons - The Scholar’s Copyright
Addendum Engine
 http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/
 University of Iowa
 http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/scholarly/documents/UI_
AuthorsAddendum.doc
 Washington University
 http://becker.wustl.edu/forms/WUaddendum-
form.html

32. Q&A + Links
 Scholarly Communications LibGuide
 http://instr.iastate.libguides.com/content.php?pid=2123&sid=37895
 SHERPA RoMEO
 http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
 DOJA - Directory of Open Access Journals
 http://www.doaj.org/
 SPARC
 http://www.arl.org/sparc/
 NIH Public Access Policy
 http://publicaccess.nih.gov

33. Thank You !!!
H. Stephen McMinn
Science and Technology Division
Reference and Instruction Department
Iowa State University Library
Phone: 294-4789
E-Main: hsmcminn@iastate.edu