Authors who publish articles in scholarly/peer-reviewd journals may be required to sign away copyright to their scholarly works, either in full or part, when signing the Copyright Transfer Agreement. With this transfer, authors lose the rights to reproduce, distribute or copy their own works without permissions from publishers. The publishers, in turn, sell licenses to these works back to authors' institutions/libraries for exorbitant prices.
By retaining control of copyright, authors would take control of their scholary works. Signing copyright agreements with publishers does not have to be an all or nothing deal.
To retain control, authors can negotiate copyright terms, such as:
If negotiation fails, authors can:
Review your publication agreement carefully before signing to determine what rights you are transferring. You can modify the publication agreement by using an addendum to state the rights you are requesting. The publisher may accept your changes, offer you a new contract, or reject your changes. Based on their response, you will need to decide how to proceed.
Free author resources to negotiate contract terms with publishers:
Already published an article? An author can verify a publisher's policies.
Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) is a free, searchable database summarizing publishers' copyright transfer and permission policies for different manuscript versions. Each entry details what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions attached. If a journal or publisher isn't listed, contact the publisher directly. Note that Open Policy Finder doesn't cover self-archiving information for books, monographs, theses, or conference papers, though some series titles may be included.