U.S. Copyright law gives the author of an original work, such as a scholarly article, the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display the work.....until you sign a written agreement to transfer some or all of these rights.
This brochure from SPARC gives a concise explanation of:
Attach an author addendum to your publishing agreement in order to specify which rights you want to retain as the author.
Here are some templates and online tools to help you generate a personalized addendum.
The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal tool that amends the publisher's agreement allowing authors to keep articles key rights.
The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine (sponsored by SPARC and the Science Commons) will help you generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
SHERPA/RoMEO is a service run by SHERPA to show the copyright and open access self-archiving policies of academic journals. The database uses a colour‐coding scheme to classify publishers according to their self‐archiving policy. This shows authors whether the journal allows preprint or postprint archiving in their copyright transfer agreements. It currently holds records for over 22,000 journals.
Works best on Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer is no longer supported.
A directory of publishing opportunities in a number of fields, including Business, Education, Psychology, Computer Science and Health Administration and Nursing. Includes information on the style and format required as well as the review process used. Our subscription includes Journalytics Academic and Journalytics Medicine.
Also includes as list of journals that have been flagged as predatory journals.