Publishing: your rights

Generally when your article, book, or book chapter is accepted for publication, you as the author will sign a form laying out the terms of the publication contract between yourself as the author and the publisher in question. These contracts are obviously legally binding and it is important you know what you are agreeing to. If a publication has resulted from funding from an external organisation, then it may be a condition of that funding that any resulting outputs are made Open Access. It is critically important that these conditions are met as sanctions may apply.

Following a revision of the Intellectual Property policies for employees and students and the Publication and Open Access policy (1st October 2024), the University has made it easier for researchers to retain their rights to their Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM), and make them available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence in UDORA, without any publisher imposed embargos, by enabling researchers to grant the University of Derby a prior licence and include a Rights Retention Statement in their AAM. 

Make sure you take this into consideration prior to submission to a publisher by looking at our dedicated guide Research Publication, Open Access and Rights Retention Policy.

Publishing contracts

1. If circumstances prevent you from retaining the rights to your AAM and you are unable to grant the University a prior licence, then in most cases you will be required to assign the copyright to the publisher. Assigning the copyright to the publisher means that they own the copyright to your article for the duration of the copyright term. You retain your moral rights, i.e. the right to be identified as the owner, but the publishers hold the copyright, and you would need to seek permission for any subsequent use of your article. Most publishers prefer this option, as it removes all ambiguity as regards ownership, and allows the publishers to negotiate subsidiary licences or to act in cases of copyright infringement or plagiarism.
2. Please remember that this is your work so it is vital that you read, understand and question anything in the contract which you are unsure of. It is also best practice to consider the implications around dissemination of your publication particularly if is it a book or book chapter. It is possible to negotiate terms in relation to Green Open Access particularly when it comes to embargo periods. If your publication is Open Access on publication, then you should retain copyright. 
3. Occasionally a contract will specify a licence to publish instead of assignment: this means that you are granting the publisher an exclusive licence to publish your article but you retain the copyright.

The publication contract is not simply one-way: most contracts contain clauses requiring the publisher to act on your behalf in cases of copyright infringement or plagiarism; to ensure that your article is correctly catalogued and metadata-tagged to facilitate discovery by search engines; to negotiate permissions and licences for database aggregators, for example; to ensure your article is safely archived and a copy deposited in a Legal Deposit Library.

It is also important to check the contract for any clauses pertaining to Open Access or institutional repositories. The University of Derby, like most higher-education institutions, has its own institutional repository, known as UDORA. Many publishers permit authors to deposit a version of your manuscript in their institutional repository. It is likely that there may be an embargo period from the date of publication - again, it is important to check with your publisher or to check the SHERPA/RoMEO database for the particular publisher's policies.

Once a journal article has been accepted for publication, you are bound by the terms of the contract agreed between yourself and the publisher.

If you wish to re-use diagrams, illustrations or build on the research in a subsequent paper, you will need to seek permission from your publisher, as they will hold the copyright to the material.

Sherpa

If you have signed a contract with an academic publisher and are unsure what you are permitted to do with your material following publication under the terms of that contract, check the SHERPA database.

This site is a searchable database of publishers' policies regarding the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories such as the University's UDORA.

Copyright guidance for research funded by UKRI

The UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) have produced a guidance document called "Managing third-party copyright for research publications" to help researchers who are in receipt of UKRI funding, manage third-party copyright to comply with UKRI's open access policy. This explains what to do if you are including third-party content in your book chapter, monograph and edited collections in open access publications, but could also be applicable for journal articles too. Whilst this was primarily written for UKRI grantees, it covers some really good approaches for any researchers who want to know how to manage third-party content within their research. 

Another useful source of information is the JISC guide to publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences.