Author's Rights and Publishing Contracts: Find It In Your Contract
Where Are Your Rights Listed?
Publishing contracts are full of legal jargon, which can be very confusing and overwhelming. It is tempting to skip over all the fine print and just sign the contract and get on with the publishing. But the publishing contract is where (among other things) your author rights are defined.
Below are some links to help explain the contract overall, and to help you find exactly where your author rights are listed in the contract:
- Book Contract Basics: All the Clauses of a Book Contract ExplainedThe Balance posted an article (2019) briefly explaining the main components of a publishing contract.
- Sample journal article publishing contractHere is a sample of Elsevier's journal article publishing contract template (find it under the Help & Support header).
- Sample publishing contractsHere is a sample of various types of publishing contract templates (for example, literary agents, books, and journal articles), with clause explanations.
- Sample wording of Author Rights clauseColumbia University provides some examples of the type of wording specifically for a copyright clause.
The author rights clause is not inherently a bad clause, but you should still look out for it, so you know what you are agreeing to. Often you can find the author rights description by locating a bolded "Copyright" header in the contract, or by recognizing the “transfer of rights” verbiage.
Negotiating
Publishers are often willing to negotiate on author rights, although choosing to do so will likely delay the publishing process. However, if you would like to negotiate for more author rights for your work, the links below offer some support:
- Author Rights ResourcesCornell breaks down various options for author rights, explaining publishers' tactics and some resources you can use to find rights information.
- Contract Negotiation RemindersUniversity of Texas provides an important reminder for negotiating your rights.
- Sample Author AddendumSPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has a sample addendum which can potentially be added to a publisher's contract.
- Addendum EngineScience Commons developed a tool which will write a personalized Author Addendum based on user input.
As they say, if nothing else, at least read the contract.
There could be some items in it that you’ll regret later. If you want to change anything, ask your editor for it: you’ll never get what you don’t ask for, and you won't get denied publication.
And finally, it is your right to ask for support about what your contract means: ask your publishing editor, or us in Scholarly Communications at UNC, to walk through the contract.
