The Graduate School Reference Center

Know Your Rights As An Author

Authors can retain their rights through an appropriate addendum, which allows for the re-use, distribution, creation of derivatives, and depositing of work in a repository like Scholarly Commons. 

• transferring copyright doesn’t have to be all or nothing
• publishers only need the right of first publication

Addendums

• SPARC and Science Commons are two widely used addendums
  • Simply complete the form and select which rights you want to retain
  • Attach it ​with your CTA

Copyright transfer agreements (CTA): legally-binding documents that most publishers require authors to sign in order to transfer copyright from the author to the publisher

SHERPA/RoMEO collects information about publisher policies related to journal archiving policies. Journals are color-coded by policy: 

Material presented here largely comes from the Association of College and Resource Libraries (ACRL) Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Author's Rights