Author Copyright Agreements

Scholars typically sign copyright agreements with publishers that transfer all article rights to those publishers. The Association of College and Research Libraries' Scholarly Communication Toolkit describes the consequences of this routine rights transfer:

• Scholars who sign away all rights can find themselves requesting permission from publishers to place their own articles on a personal web site, in a course pack or an institutional repository, or to distribute copies to colleagues.
• Scholars create the content (articles) and provide editing and peer review. In general, publishers receive both content and quality control at no cost. This contributes to the fact that some commercial publishers post large profits—up to 40% in some cases.
• Academic libraries then purchase back this content, including that which may have originated with their own faculty. Libraries face tremendous pressure to continue providing access to “core journals” in every discipline represented on a campus—regardless of price.

Fortunately, as a result of the open access movement and other factors, publishers are increasingly modifying their copyright agreements to allow scholars to post their articles on personal Web sites, institutional repositories, or disciplinary archives. However, each publisher has its own policies regarding this. Project SHERPA's Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving database provides access to these policies.

While this helps solve part of the problem, scholars should still consider retaining some or all of their copyright rights and granting publishers limited rights. In fact, some publishers have alternative copyright arrangements for those who do not want to transfer copyright. For more information, see Retain Copyright.