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E-LIS Copyright Policy

Last Update: December 26, 2010

Authors's Copyright

All work on the E-LIS remains the property of the author. When you submit a preprint to an e-prints server, you retain copyright. Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual property. Unless noted otherwise, the creators or authors retain copyright and other proprietary rights. Submitting authors will be responsible for ensuring the documents they archive do not have any restrictions on their electronic distribution. The author holds the copyright for the pre-refereed preprints, so they can be self-archived without seeking anyone else's permission. For the refereed postprint, the author can try to modify the copyright transfer agreement to allow self-archiving, or, failing that, can append or link a corrigenda file to the already self-archived preprint.

See more information on:

• Know your rights! of Project Romeo (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving), one page handout encouraging authors to retain their rights and self-archive.
• Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving, use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
• Draft Research Self-Archiving Policy of University of Southampton.

The right to self-archive

The right to self-archive the refereed postprint is a legal matter because the copyright transfer agreement pertains to that text. But the pre-refereed preprint is self-archived at a time when no copyright transfer agreement exists and so the author holds exclusive and full copyright. In general, when you publish in a journal you transfer copyright to the publisher. Most journals permit self-archiving, but it depends on the publisher's copyright policy. Authors can also deposit the postprint inside the archive with restricted access. Authors may request that the publisher give back certain rights, e.g. the right to deposit the postprint in an open access archive, or to put it on your own homepage. Some publishers have stated that they grant these rights as a standard procedure. Copyright law gives the creator of copyrighted work exclusive rights, which may be both segmented and transferred to others. Managing copyright wisely can significantly enhance the values of the educational system.

See more information on:

• How can I self-archive AND get my paper published? of Project Romeo (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving), a table that helps you to see how you may both self-archive and get your paper published, without breaking publishers' Copyright Transfer Agreements.
• Managing Your Copyright by Scott Bennett, University Librarian, Yale University, for a useful description of the value and options for managing copyright ownership.

What is the Bibliographic Data Policy?

E-LIS indexes intellectual works in the field of librarianship and information science. All bibliographic data, produced by the two main participating entities in this indexing processes, namely the submitters and the editors, are open according to the Open Data Commons Open Database License. In support of this practice, E-LIS endorses the OpenBiblio Principles as published in January 17, 2011.

Third parties may collect bibliographic data from E-LIS via automated mechanisms and facilitate end-user services to support the dissemination and retrieval of the archive's content. E-LIS general policy is to allow the harvesting of bibliographic data, but explicitly prohibits the automated harvesting of the full content of the intellectual works.