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Where Should I Publish My Research? : Author Rights and Responsibilities
Your Rights as an Author
If you are new to publishing, you may assume that you have the right to do whatever you want with your publication, e.g. send copies to anyone who asks for it. However, this may not be the case depending on the journal in which you publish.
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), explains the issue of author rights and provides tips on how you can ensure that you secure your rights as an author as fully as possible. An addendum that can be attached to publication agreements tailored for US authors is available on the site.
Know Your Rights as the Author
- The author is the copyright holder. As the author of a work you are the copyright holder unless and until you transfer the copyright to someone else in a signed agreement.
- Assigning your rights matters. Normally, the copyright holder possesses the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and modification of the original work. An author who has transferred copyright without retaining these rights must ask permission unless the use is one of the statutory exemptions in copyright law.
- The copyright holder controls the work. Decisions concerning use of the work, such as distribution, access, pricing, updates, and any use restrictions belong to the copyright holder. Authors who have transferred their copyright without retaining any rights may not be able to place the work on course Web sites, copy it for students or colleagues, deposit the work in a public online archive, or reuse portions in a subsequent work. That’s why it is important to retain the rights you need.
- Transferring copyright doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The law allows you to transfer copyright while holding back rights for yourself and others. This is the compromise that the SPARC Author Addendum helps you to achieve.
"Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum" by SPARC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Preventing and Addressing Authorship Issues
Authorship and contribution to a publication can be a complicated (and potentially uncomfortable) political and logistical process. These resources can help you discuss and plan how to provide appropriate credit for contributions as you prepare to publish, as well as practices to avoid.
- Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT)Discuss and agree with your collaborators and team members what have been your contributions to planned research outputs (according to the CRediT standard). This can be useful throughout the research process and particularly when preparing to publish your work.
- Authorship Discussion Document (COPE)Authorship can refer to individuals or groups that create an idea or develop the publication that disseminates that intellectual or creative work; however, appropriately acknowledging roles and contributions is not always a simple task. Journals are encouraged to provide clear, transparent guidance and policies for authors on providing authorship credentials, while authors must be responsible for adhering to such policies and discipline-specific guidelines. Questions over a range of issues relating to authorship may arise at any point from submission to post-publication, and journals should have policies and processes in place for handling this range of circumstances. COPE provides key information resources for authors, core policy guidance for editors, notes on the scope of submission guidelines, resources for managing pre- and post-publication authorship disputes, guidance for institutions to manage and support authorship integrity.
- How to Handle Authorship Disputes: A Guide for New Researchers (COPE)Guidance for new researchers on good authorship practice, and advice on how to deal with authorship issues as they arise.
- How to Recognise Potential Authorship Problems (COPE)The infographic highlights warning signs of inappropriate authorship which could indicate an incomplete author list or an author being added who does not fulfil the authorship criteria used. The guidance describes ghost, guest, and gift authorship and best practice to minimise authorship problems.
Attribution
Content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and is adapted from "Identifying Appropriate Journals for Publication" by University of Alberta Health Sciences Library which is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
