According to U.S. copyright law, as soon as you create a work in a fixed and tangible medium you own the copyright to that work. This means you have the right to reproduce, distribute, prepare, publicly display, and publicly perform the work. More on copyright.
Transferring your rights
If you wish to publish your work (unless you are self-publishing) publishers need your permission to reproduce your work. However, many other rights are often signed away in publishers' standard Copyright Transfer Agreement, leaving you unable to post your article on a course Web sites, share with colleagues, or make copies for classroom use, for example.
Open access journals allow authors to retain their copyrights and make the published version of your article freely accessible on the Internet.
Most publishers now allow "self-archiving" -- the placement of a digital copy of an article in an institutional or discipline-specific archive or repository. Self-archiving makes a copy of your work searchable and freely accessible on the Internet. However, it is usually the preprint or post print versions that are available, not the final version of record.
If you choose to publish in a traditional journal, remember that publishing agreements are negotiable. You may attempt to retain some of your copyrights by using an author addendum to customize your publisher agreement. Some tools for creating an author addendum are listed on the left of this page.
If you have kept some of your copyrights or are self-publishing and you wish to further tailor your needs, a Creative Commons license allows you to specify under which conditions your work may be copied. More on Creative Commons licenses.
Keep in mind that authors who have received NIH funding must deposit a copy of the final manuscript in PubMed Central. Find out more about the NIH Mandate.
your goal is simply to secure the right to deposit your article in NIH’s PubMed Central, NIH suggests inserting the following language into the publisher’s agreement:
- See more at: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum#sthash.IDGYiKAU.dpuf“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to NIH, upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible after publication by Journal.”
your goal is simply to secure the right to deposit your article in NIH’s PubMed Central, NIH suggests inserting the following language into the publisher’s agreement:
- See more at: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum#sthash.IDGYiKAU.dpuf“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to NIH, upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible after publication by Journal.”
If your goal is simply to secure the right to deposit your article in NIH’s PubMed Central, NIH suggests inserting the following language into the publisher’s agreement:
- See more at: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum#sthash.IDGYiKAU.dpuf“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to NIH, upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible after publication by Journal.”
If your goal is simply to secure the right to deposit your article in NIH’s PubMed Central, NIH suggests inserting the following language into the publisher’s agreement:
- See more at: http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/authors/addendum#sthash.IDGYiKAU.dpuf“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to NIH, upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for public archiving in PubMed Central as soon as possible after publication by Journal.”