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Legal Scholarship Publishing Guide: Authors Rights

Authors Rights  

It is important for authors to take an active role in managing the copyrights to their work and be aware of the contract agreements made between them and a publisher. 

As the author, you are the copyright holder until or unless you sign away your rights in a publisher contract. Depending on the contract agreement, you may retain some but not all, rights to your work. Academic publishers generally request that a condition of publication is signing a Copyright Transfer Agreement. 

Including the partial or full loss of author rights to your work, you may also be restricted in your ability to place the work on personal websites, deposit the work in a public digital repository, or reuse portions in a subsequent work.

Osgoode Digital Commons will check with copyright permissions if you do not know the terms of your author agreement. Some publishers have strict permissions that do not allow us to upload your work. In cases like these you can provide a pre-print since you are the copyright holder of your pre-print.  

 

What are pre-prints? 

The Association of Canadian Academic Library define a pre-print as “the original version of the manuscript as it is submitted to a journal.” 

The purpose of pre-prints is to bypass the lengthy time it takes research to be disseminated. Osgoode Digital Commons can upload pre-prints as they are created or in cases where we do not have permission to upload the published work.  

Since pre-prints are not generally considered a form of published work, most journals will accept articles that have been shared as pre-prints. However, some journals will not and it is recommended to check the journal’s policies before submitting an article prior to submitting an article. 

Retain your rights 

You can negotiate with publishers to retain some rights over your work. Author Addendums can help create the modifying language needed to retain certain rights in the publisher contract. There are open author addendum tools that can generate an addenda by allowing you to select from a range of copyright options: