Copyright Assignments

A copyright determines who has the right to distribute information. In case of scientific reports, the copyright normally rests either with the author or the publisher. Most journal publishers require that they hold the copyright if a paper is to be published in their journal. This often entails that duplications of all sorts -- paper or electronic -- require the prior written approval of authors. This makes most web repositories of papers incomplete (or illegal): they may not include preprints or other copies of papers whose copyright rests with publishers.

The two contracts here explicitly reserve the right to distribute material in a nonprofit way. The Copyright Assignment [example] transfers the copyright to the publisher, retaining rights of nonprofit distribution, and the Copyright License [example] retains the copyright with the author, but "licenses" (permits) the publisher to publish the article.

They are provided here as suggestions for CLCG authors who wish to distribute their scholarly works on the World-Wide Web. CLCG does not have the legal wherewithal to defend your copyrights or the legitimacy of these forms. We provide them as suggestions that may bear more weight than individual suggestions.

Thanks to Stu Shieber of Harvard who suggested the prose, and Peter Kleiweg who built the web interface.