Own Your Rights - Activity

Introduction | Presentation | Activity | Further Resources

Review sample contracts (10 minutes)

Read three sample author/publishing contracts, and consider two important questions.

Follow the links to the relevant portions of the sample contracts.    

What rights are you giving up and granting to the publisher?

Elsevier:

Assignment of copyright - “I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript identified above (where Crown Copyright is asserted, authors agree to grant an exclusive publishing and distribution license) and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript (the "Article"). This assignment of rights means that I have granted to the Copyright Owner the exclusive right to publish and reproduce the Article, or any part of the Article, in print, electronic and all other media (whether now known or later developed), in any form, in all languages, throughout the world, for the full terms of copyright, and the right to license others to do the same, effective when the Article is accepted for publication. This includes the right to enforce the rights granted hereunder against third parties.”

Supplemental Materials - “With respect to any Supplemental Materials that I submit, the Copyright Owner shall have a perpetual worldwide non-exclusive right and license to publish, extract, reformat, adapt, build upon, index, redistribute, link to and otherwise use all or any part of the Supplemental Materials in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), and to permit others to do so.”

Research Data - “With respect to any Research Data that I wish to make accessible on a site or through a service of the Copyright Owner, the Copyright Owner shall have a perpetual worldwide, non-exclusive right and license to publish, extract, reformat, index, adapt, build upon, redistribute, link to and otherwise use all or any part of the Research Data in all forms and media (where now known or later developed), and to permit others to do so.”

Proceedings of Machine Learning Research:

You hereby grant a Creative Commons copyright license in the article to the general public, in particular a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which is incorporated herein by reference and is further specified at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode Links to an external site. (human readable summary at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Links to an external site.

Proceedings of the ARL Library Assessment Conference:

The Author grants to ARL the non-exclusive rights to reproduce, publish, display, distribute, and preserve the Work for the duration of its copyright, throughout the world, in all media, including by means of a third-party online information provider or repository.

What rights are you keeping?

Elsevier:

I understand that I retain or am hereby granted (without the need to obtain further permission) the Author Rights (see description below and definitions), and that no rights in patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights are transferred to the Copyright Owner.

The Author Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article for Personal use, Internal Institutional Use. They also include the right to use these different versions of the Article for Scholarly Sharing purposes, which include sharing:

    • the Preprint on any website or repository at any time;
    • the Accepted Manuscript on certain websites and usually after an embargo period;
    • the Published Journal Article only privately on certain websites, unless otherwise agreed by Copyright Owner.

Proceedings of Machine Learning Research:

You retain ownership of all rights under copyright in all versions of the article, and all rights not expressly granted in this agreement.

Proceedings of the ARL Library Assessment Conference:

The copyright in the Work shall remain with the Author.

Download the full text Elsevier publishing contract (2021) Links to an external site. or visit Elsevier’s Copyright page Links to an external site.

Download the full text Proceedings of Machine Learning publishing contract Links to an external site. (undated) or visit PMLR’s Publication Agreement page Links to an external site.

Download the full text Proceedings of the ARL Library Assessment Conference publishing contract (2022) Links to an external site. or visit the Library Assessment Conference Copyright Agreement page Links to an external site.

Discuss this with a friend

We know that legal language can be hard to understand. Find a friend to discuss the contract language with.

Questions you might ask:

  • Did you know that people can sign on behalf of co-authors?
  • Did you notice that the publisher has the right to edit the work prior to publication with the author’s approval?
  • Did you notice how a rights agreement can specify many different aspects of a work, such as sending your own article via email, using your article in grant applications, and patent and trademark rights? (For more examples, explore Elsevier’s list of definitions)

Imagine your own scenario (10 minutes)

Imagine your manuscript is accepted for publication and you have received one of these contracts.

Plan your interactions with the publisher.

  • What clarifying questions will you ask?
  • What changes to the contract will you request? 
  • Does it make sense to add an addendum? (The Further Resources page has more information about addenda to publishing contracts.)

Introduction | Presentation | Activity | Further Resources