Open Access: Publishing & Copyright Management

Copyright Management

Authors must pay close attention to copyright transfer contracts between themselves and journals publishing their work.  However, this process is fairly simple, and given that it is required of every researcher who is publishing an article that has been supported by NIH funds, journals realize that they need to anticipate these requests and accommodate their authors.

It is also important to remember that unless the copyright transfer agreement (CTA) indicates that the journal has committed to depositing your article in PMC on your behalf, the journal bears no responsibility for whether or not you are in violation of the NIH Policy. Responsibility lies first and foremost with the author. Additionally, if an author wishes to share a version of the manuscript on a personal webpage or institutional repository, and the CTA makes no statement regarding this option, authors will need to use an “Author Copyright Addendum” and insure that they retain these rights.

For compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy, a CTA must answer three questions:

•    “Which version of the manuscript can be deposited into PubMed Central?”
•    “Who will upload the manuscript to PMC? (journal or author)?”
•    “When can it be made publicly available? (What is the embargo period, if any?)” 

 If these questions cannot be answered in the publisher’s CTA, then the author will need to use an “Author Copyright Addendum” to modify the terms in the publisher’s CTA.

Author Copyright Addenda and Forms

The Countway Library has several form letters and an Author Copyright Addendum generator which can help streamline this process for authors needing to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

NIH Public Access Policy: Harvard Author Copyright Addendum
Harvard NIH Addendum Instructions and Sample Submission Letters

For retaining broader rights to your manuscript, please consult the following resources:

Author's Copyright Agreement Addendum tools (Science Commons)
SPARC Author Rights information

Questions?

The Countway Library offers 1 hour training sessions to individual departments and research groups on Publishing, Copyright and the NIH Public Access Policy, and helps to ensure compliance from the stage of copyright transfer to manuscript deposit. If you would like to schedule an information session or have any questions, please contact:

P. Scott Lapinski,
Digital Resources and Services Librarian
617 432-6784