Comments on: Altering copyright forms

By: Matto Ichiban

Matto Ichiban — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:10:28 +0000

If you had never granted any rights previously to the journal (or whoever is publishing it) and it is not a work made for hire (which I doubt), then you retain the copyright. A transfer of copyright or granting an exclusive license (one that would prevent you from exercising a right) in the U.S. requires a written document under 17 U.S.C. 201(a). So unless you signed something after being accepted for publication, then all the publisher has is probably a nonexclusive license to publish, which does not affect any of your rights to publish elsewhere. But it’s all moot now anyway.

By: djc

djc — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:01:44 +0000

I always insert “Author retains the right to publish the paper in any collection of his papers”. That’s generally taken to be a reasonable clause for print publication, and this phrasing covers electronic publication (e.g. on a website) too.

By: raj

raj — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:51:34 +0000

I would suggest that, instead of crossing out the 50% and inserting 100%, you write the journal a letter indicating something to the effect that you need to be able to provide a complete copy of the paper on your web site, possibly also offering to give the journal credit for the publication. I don’t know where you are located (or what law is to apply to the agreement), but in the US the general rule is that, in the absence of an agreement transferring the copyright, the author retains the copyright unless the work is a “work made for hire.” I doubt that your paper would fall into the “work made for hire” category, so unless you agree to transfer the copyright, it is yours. In that case, it seems to me that you would be able to do what you want with the paper if you don’t sign some agreement with the journal publisher. On the other hand, if you believe that you might want that journal to publish other papers of yours, you might be advised to come to an amicable settlement with them.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:03:59 +0000

I did that with hospital admission papers too—modified the waiver of liability with a “provided the Hospital acts non-negligently” or something to that effect. Even though hospitals are presumably more edgy than publishers, I didn’t get any objection.

By: Jonathan Ichikawa

Jonathan Ichikawa — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:03:29 +0000

You could always just sign and return the 50% version, then publish the entire paper on the web with a 50% grayscale font…

By: Prometheus 6

Prometheus 6 — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 01:16:15 +0000

My position would be that I did what I agreed to do for the agreed-upon sum. Any additional signature will require additional payment.

By: eszter

eszter — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:48:51 +0000

Yup, that’s what I thought I would do.. cross out the “50%” and replace it with “100%”. (I figured “up to 100%” still made sense so I wasn’t going to cross out “up to”.) I just wanted to see if anyone had experience with this.

By: Alex Halavais

Alex Halavais — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:26:24 +0000

At the conference on scholarly comm we did last year, several experienced scholars suggested that they had changed their contracts to this effect (i.e., to allow them to retain 100% web publication) with nary a raised eyebrow. One of the things that came up in the questions was that it would be really helpful if one of the people that regularly does this successfully would actually provide publicly a version of the language they use. No luck so far… Couldn’t you just change it to 100% and sign? You first! :)

By: Kai von Fintel

Kai von Fintel — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:19:01 +0000

Strike the “up to 50%” and replace it with “100%”, send the corrected and signed form back, and see what happens. Most probably, they’ll accept it. If they complain, you can negotiate or give in. I would negotiate, but like Brian says I am now tenured and don’t mind a fight.

By: jam

jam — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:34:08 +0000

I suspect you’ve already transfered the copyright to the publisher in order to induce him to publish the thing and now he’s being gracious and granting you some rights back. You may not have realized at the time that’s what you did. Look at the small print in the submission guidelines.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:50:52 +0000

I haven’t done this personally, because I’ve spent so much of my life as a powerless untenured person, but people who I’ve talked to about changing copyright forms to let them post papers to their own websites have reported that journals haven’t had a problem. This is in philosophy where commercial value of the papers is vanishing, but maybe it generalises.

By: eszter

eszter — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:23:40 +0000

I know about CC, but I’m wondering whether people have experience suggesting an alternative to the text provided by an academic journal publisher.

By: Lurker

Lurker — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 22:08:43 +0000

Creative Commons