Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside. John C. Newman and Robin Feldman. N Engl J Med 2011; 365:2447-2449. December 29, 2011.

• Comply with the NIH Public Access Policy
• Comply with funding agency policies for public access
• Post the work on an institutional or laboratory website
• Archive the work on an institutional repository
• Present the work at conference or meeting and give copies of the work to attendees
• Retain oral rights to the work
• Post the work on Reserves
• Use all or part of the work as a basis for a future publication
• Use data or images in a future publication
• Send copies of the work to colleagues

Please note that the WU addendum is based on the peer-reviewed manuscript version of a journal article–not the final published version.

Any questions? Contact Cathy Sarli.

• Do you have a manuscript or other work that you are preparing for publication?
• Do you know what rights you have as an author?
• Are you aware that you can retain rights to your work?
• Do you want to re-use your work in connection with academic and professional activities?

Two sessions are available:

• Tuesday October 5, 2010, Cori Auditorium, 10-11 am
• Wednesday October 13, 2010, ARC Presentation Room at Olin Library, 4-5 pm

For more information, see the full announcement.

There are good reasons to retain your copyright rather than assigning it to the publisher. Why might you prefer this?

• They don’t need it. Publishers can do all the things they might legitimately want to do with your work (publish it, put it on their web site, advertise it, submit it to the major databases, offer it to other authors for commentary, and the list could go on) without owning the copyright. You can grant all the permissions that are necessary to make their publication perfectly lawful. A variety of standard form agreements exist to accomplish this.

• Flexibility. You probably can’t anticipate all the ways in which you might want to use (or reuse) your article in the future. Years from now, you may decide that you want to post it on SSRN, or convert it to a book chapter, or update it to account for subsequent legal developments. If you own the rights to the work, you can do all those things. If you assigned away your rights, you must negotiate with the original publisher. Perhaps they will grant you the permission to reuse their work (remember, if you assigned away your copyright, they own it) in the manner you wish. But, at a minimum, it introduces inconveniences that would not exist if you retained your copyright.

• Make copies of the work for educational use, including class notes, study guides or electronic reserves
• Use part of the work as a basis for a future publication
• Send copies of the work to colleagues
• Present the work at conference or meeting and give copies of the work to attendees
• Use a different or extended version of the work for a future publication
• Deposit the work in an institutional or funding agency repository
• Post the work on a laboratory or institutional web site on a restricted network or publicly available network
• Include the work in future derivative works, including a dissertation or thesis
• Use the work in a compilation of works or collected works
• Expand the work into a book form or book chapter

For more information on author rights, see Authors and Copyright.

“. . .article-level metrics will attempt to capture the actions and opinions of entire communities of readers to give a rich and sophisticated picture of research impact that will be helpful to authors and readers alike. Readers may then frame that picture in the context of their particular field and their own work.”

For more information on Assessment of Research Impact, see Assessing the Impact of Research.

Many publishers allow authors to retain a number of rights to their work. Some examples include:

• Elsevier: “What Rights do I Retain as a Journal Author?”
• Wiley-Blackwell: “Author Rights“
• Oxford: “Publication Rights Policies“
• Nature Publishing Group: “NPG Author Licence Policy“

For more information: Authors and Copyright.

• One way is to use the same variation of your name consistently throughout your academic career. If your name is a common name, add a middle name to distinguish yourself from other authors. Standardize your output to maximize your impact.
• Retain rights to your work in order to reuse your work to promote visibility and accessibility. Many publishers allow authors to retain some rights to their work. See Elsevier’s “What rights do I retain as a journal author?”
• If your work involves potential translational medicine applications, include a discussion of how the research could translate to clinical outcomes. “Impact of journal articles will be improved if they provide a direct line of reasoning for how findings might translate into useful information for real-world behaviors or technologies. This will enhance the probability that the article will affect public policy and thus increase its impact.” See “Publishing in the Psychological Sciences: Enhancing Journal Impact While Decreasing Author Fatigue.“
• Consider submitting your work to a journal that is currently indexed by PubMed. PubMed is a freely available citation database and citations are crawled by Google Scholar.

 
Interested in other strategies? See Strategies for Enhancing the Impact of Research.

There is a customized addendum form available for WU authors that allows authors to select from certain groups of rights and generate a PDF that can be attached to a journal publisher’s copyright form. WU authors are not required to use this form.

View Sample Customized Form

More information on rights for authors.

Contact Cathy Sarli if you have questions.