University of Oregon Libraries
University of Oregon Libraries

Scholarly Publishing Support

SCIS offers a range of services in support of UO authors and editors. Find information on how to:

Hoe's one-cylinder printing press (source: Wikimedia)

[Note: this page is in progress. Additional material will be added during July and the material will be restructured into multiple pages.]

Author's Addendum

The UO Senate recommends that all UO authors use authors' addenda to insure that they keep the rights they need when they publish scholarly papers. Attach an addendum when you submit the copyright transfer form for a paper you have accepted for publication.

See also:

The NIH Public Access Policy

All NIH-funded researchers are required by federal law to deposit a copy of their NIH-derived publications in PubMed Central and to cite the PubMed Central PMCID as part of grant reports and future grant submissions.

"The Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research." Important secondary goals:

  • For patient advocates: "If my tax dollars pay for information that affects my health, I have the right to read that information"
  • For libraries: develop open-access alternatives to commercial publishing
  • For authors: increase the impact of scholarly work

For all peer-reviewed publications arising from NIH grants, authors must

  1. Secure permission from their publishers to allow online archiving in PubMed Central
  2. Deposit author's final version in PubMed Central
  3. Cite the PMCID in future grant submissions, etc.

For more details, see the NIH FAQ at http://publicaccess.nih.gov

If you are a UO author of an NIH-funded paper and would like assistance complying with the Public Access Policy, contact your library subject specialist or JQ Johnson (6-1746).

See also:

Copyright Transfer Agreements

Most academic journals require that authors transfer copyright ownership to the publisher as a condition of publication. Authors are asked to sign the agreement after their article is accepted. After the copyright transfer, the publisher is essentially the legal author of the work, and has full control over its further use (making copies, creating derivative works, quoting from it, etc.).

A journal copyright transfer may include a license that allows the original author a few rights to use the work. However, most UO authors will find that they have given up more rights than they expect or wish to. It's possible to negotiate the terms of the publishing contract.

The first step is to know what rights you really want to retain. For example, you probably want to be able to use your own work in your teaching, to distribute copies of the work to colleagues, to reuse figures or quote from it in future works, and to make a version of your work publicly accessible, perhaps in the UO's Scholars' Bank or a disciplinary repository like arXiv. If your work is grant-funded, then the funding agency may make additional requirements that in turn imply that you need to retain sufficient legal rights to comply.

The second step is to make a counter-offer to the publisher rather than simply signing the copyright transfer agreement -- typically by including an author's addendum. If the publisher responds by rejecting the addendum, you can negotiate, and in a few cases where the stakes are high may even want to obtain legal advice.

For more detail on how to proceed, see:

Journal Impact Factors

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Depositing your work in Scholars' Bank

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Avoiding Plagiarism

Check your (or a student's or collaborator's) work for accidental plagiarism. Use the Blackboard SafeAssign module.

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
 Last Modified: 08/19/2008