In recognition of International Open Access Week, we wanted to address the challenge of maintaining your rights as an author of a journal article and offer a solution.

If you have had an article published in a journal, did you have to sign a restrictive publication agreement? Sometimes called a ‘copyright transfer agreement’ these agreements often do just that—transfer the copyright from you (the author) to the publisher. But did you know that publishing agreements are negotiable? Publishers only need your permission to publish an article, they do not need to control the copyright as well.

By retaining the copyright of your journal article, you can freely share it with colleagues and students. If you retain the copyright, you can post the article on your website or in an online repository and include sections from the article in later works. In short, you will be able to share your article with the academic community as you wish, giving your research the exposure it deserves.

SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. They have developed the SPARC® Author Addendum, which is a “legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles.” In keeping with the open access theme, this form is a free resource developed in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons.