How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022
What is copyright?
Rights and permissions
Publishing the paper
Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.
—Anthony Trollope
What is copyright?
Before you submit your paper to a journal, you should be aware of two items regarding copyright. First, if your paper includes illustrations or other materials that have been published elsewhere, you will need permission to republish them unless you hold the copyright or they are in the public domain. Second, you may need to transfer the copyright for your paper to the journal (or, for some journals, transfer limited rights while retaining copyright). The copyright information in this chapter focuses mainly on U.S. copyright laws. However, international agreements have provided considerable consistency among countries in this regard. Information on such agreements can be accessed online (for example, U.S. Copyright Office n.d.). Likewise, information on copyright policies of individual countries can be accessed online.
Copyright is the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, and sell the matter and form of a literary or artistic work. (Here, “literary and artistic” is broadly defined to include scientific papers.) Copyright protects original forms of expression, but not the ideas being expressed. The data you are presenting are not protected by copyright; however, the collection of the data and the way you have presented them are protected. You own the copyright of a paper you wrote for the length of your life plus 70 years, so long as it was not done for an employer or commissioned as work for hire. If you have collaborated on the work, each person is a co-owner of the copyright, with equal rights.
Copyright is divisible. The owner of the copyright may, for example, grant one person a nonexclusive right to reproduce the work and another the right to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work. Copyright can also be transferred. Transfers of the copyright must be made in writing by the owner. If you wish to copy, reprint, or republish all or portions of a copyrighted work that you do not own, you must get permission from the copyright owner. If you, as an author, have transferred the complete copyright of your work to a publisher, you must obtain permission for use of your own material from the publisher.
Fair use of copyrighted material, according to the 1976 Copyright Act, allows you to copy and distribute small sections of a copyrighted work. In keeping with guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office (2021), it also can permit making or providing some copies for purposes such as “teaching, scholarship, and research.” It does not allow you to republish complete articles without permission, whether for profit or otherwise.