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Copyright and you
Skip to navigationWhat is copyright?
Copyright gives the copyright holder exclusive rights over how others use their work.
As an author, this means that which copyright option you choose defines how researchers, scientists, policy makers, journalists, corporations, or anyone else who has an interest in your research can use your work.
Copyright has a time limit (usually life of the author plus 50–70 years for a journal article) and the level and type of protection offered varies between countries. Local and international laws and conventions mean that the copyright is recognized and protected, to varying degrees, in almost every country in the world.
In a digital world, how others want to read and reuse content is evolving rapidly. Understanding what your copyright options are is becoming ever more important, especially with the growth of open access publishing.
What does it mean for you?
Copyright allows you to protect your original material and stop others from using your work without your permission. It means others will generally need to credit you and your work properly, increasing its impact.
Copyright at Taylor & Francis
When publishing in a subscription journal published by Taylor & Francis, we ask you to assign copyright to us. Alternatively, any author publishing with us can also opt to retain their own copyright and sign a License to Publish (sample).
If you choose to assign copyright to us, as part of the publication process, you will be asked to sign a publishing agreement. This will be after your manuscript has been through the peer review process, has been accepted, and moves into production. Details will be sent to you via email, from the journal’s Production Editor.
Find out more about what defines a conflict of interest and how to declare it
Why do we ask you to assign copyright to us?
Asking you to assign copyright means we are showing our commitment to:
- Act as stewards of the scholarly record of your work
- Defend your article against plagiarism and copyright infringement
- Enable you to share your article (using your free eprints and Green Open Access at Taylor & Francis)
- Assure attribution of your work, by making sure you are identified as the author
We encourage you to:
- Share your work
- Make printed copies of your article to use for lecture or classroom purposes
- Include your article in a thesis or dissertation
- Present your article at a meeting or conference and distribute printed copies of the article
- Republish the article (making sure you cite the original article)
- Adapt and expand your published journal article to make it suitable for your thesis or dissertation
Alternatively, any author publishing with us can opt to retain their own copyright and sign a License to Publish.
Useful definitions
Version of Record (VoR)
"A fixed version of a journal article that has been made available by ... a publisher by formally and exclusively declaring the article 'published.'
This includes any 'early release' article that is formally identified as being published even before the compilation of a volume issue and assignment of associated metadata, as long as it is citable via some permanent identifier(s).
This does not include any 'early release' article that has not yet been 'fixed' by processes that are still to be applied, such as copy-editing, proof corrections, layout, and typesetting."
(Defined by National Information Standards Organization, in partnership with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.)
Useful links
- Creative Commons licenses
- UK Intellectual Property Office's What is copyright?" guide
- US Government's Copyright Office guide to copyright
- World Intellectual Property Organization guide to copyright