1. Managing the Rights to Your Publications
Taylor Davis-Van Atta
Digital Scholarship Coordinator, UH Libraries
Publisher, Music & Literature: an arts and humanities journal

2. Know your rights as the author. You may…
Reproduce your work in physical form (e.g., through photocopying)
Distribute those copies
Prepare transformative or other derivative works (e.g. translations)
Perform or display the work publicly
Reuse your work in teaching, future publications, and in all scholarly and professional activities
Post your work online
License your work (declare how it may be legally used by others)
Authorize others to exercise any of these rights

3. As an author, you can lose the right to…
Reuse all or any part of your publication in future work
Reuse your data or other supplemental elements (images, charts, tables, graphs, etc.) in future work
Make your work available online
License your work
Distribute copies of your publication to your colleagues, peers, students, and prospective employers

4. Finding a suitable publisher
What life do you want your work to lead once it’s published?
Read, read, read…
Pay attention to your own workflow and points of discovery
Investigate a shortlist of potential journals & discuss with co-authors
Are there Open Access journals available in your field? How do their impact rankings compare to peer subscription-based/paywall journals?
How do publishers handle data, images, supplemental elements?
Grant funder requirements
Search publisher and funder policies: Sherpa/Romeo and Sherpa/Juliet

5. Interrogating journals for indicators of quality
Does it have membership under an umbrella agreement (e.g. Committee on Publishing Ethics, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association)?
Staff contact information
Turnaround times and peer review policies
Who is on the editorial board? Are they affiliated with reputable institutions?
Databases in which the journal is indexed, abstracted
If the journal is Open Access, how is it funded? Are fees disclosed? Is it listed in DOAJ?
Do published articles have permanent identifiers such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)?
Clarivate Analytics Impact Factor (formerly Thomson- Reuters Journal Citation Reports Impact Factor)
If in doubt, consult your UH subject librarian

6. Publisher contracts, a.k.a. Copyright Transfer Agreements
Value the copyright in your intellectual property
Scrutinize the publication agreement
Look up the definition of any unknown or unclear terminology
Agreements are negotiable and publishers are generally used to exchanges with authors over rights
Find a balanced approach: it’s not all or nothing

7. A balanced approached to rights might look like…
The Author retains the right to…
use and develop her/his own work without restriction
increase circulation of the work for education and research purposes
receive proper attribution when the work is used
deposit the work in an online open access repository where it will be forever available, if desired
The Publisher is granted the right to…
a non-exclusive license to publish and distribute work
receive proper attribution and citation as journal of first publication
migrate the work to future formats and include it in collections, indexes, and databases
receive a financial return
Adapted from SPARC’s “Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum. Accessed Feb 5, 2018, from

8. From Elsevier’s Sample Copyright Transfer Agreement
Accessed January 30, 2018 from

9. From Elsevier’s Sample Copyright Transfer Agreement
Accessed January 30, 2018 from

10. From Elsevier’s Sample Copyright Transfer Agreement
Accessed January 30, 2018 from

11. From Elsevier’s Sample Copyright Transfer Agreement
Accessed January 30, 2018 from

12. Under this agreement, can you…
Reproduce your work in physical form? Options restricted
Distribute those copies? Options restricted
Prepare transformative or other derivative works (e.g. translations)? Not without Elsevier’s permission
Perform or display the work publicly? Not without Elsevier’s permission
Reuse your work in teaching, future publications, and in all scholarly and professional activities? Options restricted
Post your work online? Only a pre-publication version, only after applicable embargo period
License your work (declare how it may be legally used by others)? No.
Authorize others to exercise any of these rights? No.

13. Accessed January 30, 2018 from https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/copyright-and-you/

14. Accessed January 30, 2018 from https://www.plos.org/license

15. Accessed January 30, 2018 from https://sparcopen

16. Accessed January 30, 2018 from https://sparcopen

17. Accessed January 30, 2018 from http://sciencecommons

18. If the publisher rejects the addendum…
Explain the importance for you to retain these rights (be specific)
Ask the publisher to articulate why the license rights provided under the author addendum are insufficient to allow publication
Evaluate the adequacy of the publisher’s response in light of the reasonable and growing need for authors to retain key rights
Consider publishing with an organization that will facilitate the widest dissemination of your work
Still no? Publish your work as planned and reconsider next time – the decision is entirely up to you!
Adapted from SPARC’s “Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum. Accessed Feb 5, 2018, from

19. Accessed January 30, 2018 from http://digitalcommons. unl

20. Planning for maximum impact
Integrate best practices into your research and publishing workflow
Date and keep track of your preprints, postprints, and supplemental products (data, charts, visualizations, etc.)
Do you homework on prospective journals and their copyright policies at an early stage in the research process
Write down what rights you want to retain as you go along and be prepared to negotiate for those rights
Post an eligible version of your latest article to an Open Access venue upon acceptance (or as early as stipulated in your contract)

21. Questions?
Contact me directly at anytime: Taylor Davis-Van Atta