Scholarly Communications

Author Rights

Thinking about your Author Rights

Author Rights are the rights afforded to the creator of content by copyright law. Authors who publish articles in scholarly journals often sign away copyright to their scholarly work without fully realizing. Many times this can be avoided by negotiating with the publisher to maintain your copyright.

By retaining control of your copyright, you will be able to:

• Reuse your work in teaching, future publications, and in scholarly and professional activities.
• Post your work online or "self-archive".
  • Most publishers allow authors to post the post-print version of their work (aka the "accepted manuscript") online.
  • See "Sharing different versions of your article" from Taylor and Francis for an example of what would be required. 

Educate yourself on the options you have as an author and negotiate your publishing contract to retain important rights to your work.

• SPARC's Author Addendum

Consider publishing in journals that are open access or that have copyright policies that honor authors' rights.

• To find peer-reviewed OA journals in your field, see the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Distinguish your work with ORCID

ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized. Some journals are now requiring an ORCID identifier for publishing.  You can sign up for your own ORCID id here.