Are you in the process of publishing a scholarly article? Do you plan on using your article in a class you are teaching? Want to share your article with colleagues? Maybe you’d like to modify the work in the future or archive your work in Himmelfarb’s institutional repository, the Health Sciences Research Commons. Doing any of these things may be in direct violation of the agreement you sign with the publisher prior to your work being published.
An important consideration to keep in mind when choosing a journal is author rights. Many traditional publishers include language in author agreements that transfers most, if not all, of an author's right to their work to the publisher. Most publishers don’t even try to hide the fact that authors are signing away the rights to their works - publishers often call these agreements “Copyright Transfer Agreements.” These agreements limit the authors ability to archive, share, use, modify or display their work once it has been published. Before you sign an agreement with a publisher, consider including an addendum to ensure that you retain certain rights to reuse and share your work.
One option is to submit a SPARC Author Addendum that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to maintain the right to create derivative works, authorize others to share and reuse your work (for non-commercial purposes), and to distribute your work in class or to colleagues for educational purposes. You could also use the available GW custom author addendum. For more information about negotiating author rights, take a look at the Author Rights page of our Scholarly Publishing Guide or contact Himmelfarb’s Metadata and Scholarly Publishing Librarian, Sara Hoover (shoover@gwu.edu).
