Author Rights

When you're ready to publish, be careful not to sign away your author rights. Options are available to help you keep your rights as authors:

• Understanding the journal's policies on self-archiving which can enable you to provide an open access version of your work
• Publishing with journals which have progressive copyright, access, and archiving policies. See RoMEO site for a directory of publishers' policies
• Publishing in scholarly open-access journal publications. Select from the thousands of journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals

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We can help you navigate copyright permissions and author rights.

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Author rights resources

• The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalitition (SPARC) compiled a list of author rights resources.

• The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and SPARC created the Author Rights & the SPARC Author Addendum form which can be used in the Canadian publishing environment to modify publishers’ agreements on author rights and copyright. See the Scholar’s copyright addendum for the American version.

• Canadian Copyright Information materials and resources related to copyright issues in the Canadian context.

• Creative Commons License samples of a variety of copyright licenses. 

• Open Access Scholarship Information Sourcebook (OASIS) highlights open access developments and initiatives from around the world with links to additional resources and case studies.

• Scholar's Copyright Addendum a form creation site which allows authors to amend traditional copyright agreements by specifying rights they wish to retain.

• Copyright Collective Societies links to collective societies which administer the rights of several copyright owners, granting permission and setting conditions of use.