When you write articles for scholarly publication most journal publishers require you to sign over your copyright as a condition of publication. The copyright portion of the contract governs what rights you will enjoy following publication of your article. Most publishers want to make money by controlling access to the material they publish, but this interest needs to be balanced with your interest as an author in making your work as widely available as possible, and in being able to reuse your material for teaching and other non-commercial purposes.
If your research has been funded by the NIH, NIH now requests that you deposit a copy of your peer-reviewed article in PubMed Central (see the Forum article from June/July 2005). All of your work would benefit from deposit in the Jefferson Digital Commons, our own institutional repository. But in order to make such deposits, you need to have right to do so.
Looking Forward
While some publishers do explicitly authorize you to reuse your material, or to deposit it with NIH or your institutional repository, many do not make such allowances in their contracts. You have the right to request changes in your contract. The easiest way to do this is to attach an addendum outlining the rights you wish to retain.
Both AISR and Jefferson's University Counsel recommend that you retain your right to deposit your articles at NIH and/or Jefferson Digital Commons, using a contract addendum - a page or two that you add to the contract claiming your rights.
The best addendum to use was developed for the Boston Library Consortium, is available in JEFFLINE's JEFFSelects Copyright module. Another acceptable addendum is from SPARC, the Coalition of which Jefferson is a member. The sample language includes clear and easy instructions on how to attach the addendum to your contract.
If your publisher refuses to accept your proposed changes, you can still publish your article under the stricter contract if you wish. But it doesn't hurt to ask, and if publishers catch on that this is an important issue for faculty, then they'll start to modify their contracts so it is less of an issue.
The University Counsel's office is a resource for questions about contract language, and has reviewed both addenda cited.
Looking Back
Some publishers have made changes in their policies that now override contracts you signed in the past. Such changes are almost always to remove restrictions. How do you know what is your publisher's current policy? Look it up on the SHERPA site - a database of publishers' policies.
If your publisher isn't on the list, and/or you haven't kept a copy of your agreement, you will need to contact the publisher for a statement about their current policy. AISR staff can help; call Scott Library's Reference Desk at 215-503-8150 or use the AskaLibrarian@jefferson.edu email service for help in contacting publishers.
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