8 Authors’ Rights and Publishing Agreements
Prior to signing publishing agreements with publishers, authors are the sole copyright holders of their research materials. This means that they hold several rights, including the right to copy, display, perform, share, adapt, and reproduce their work. Publishers typically require researchers to transfer these rights, but researchers may wish to retain some rights for a variety of reasons including the following:
- Funder requirements—the funder wishes to have research materials available for sharing or reuse
- Data sharing—the author or another researcher may want to reproduce a study using a previously collected dataset. Copyright transfers can also interfere with methods such as automated capture and analysis of large datasets.
- Accessibility—the publisher may not make articles/datasets appropriately accessible to people with disabilities.
- Educational uses—the author may wish to replicate all or part of their research for teaching purposes.
For these reasons, authors should examine publishing agreements carefully and consider negotiating for rights they wish to (or need to) retain. In some cases, it is possible to negotiate with publishers to retain certain rights. This video from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) summarizes these issues.
Addenda and pre-set statements can be used to negotiate with publishers. The following resources provide more information about these possibilities.