Clause 11

This could-be-worse clause is aimed at writers, especially academic authors.

Yellow warning hand

The terms of this clause aren’t the best we’ve seen, but they're not the worst either.

CLAUSE TEXT:

Upon publication of the Article, [journal] grant to you, the Author(s), without charge, the right to republish the Article in revised or unrevised form, in any language, in any volume consisting entirely of your own work, or in any work that you edit, provided that the [journal] is notified of such use, and it carries the proper copyright notice and acknowledgment of its original publication in by [journal].

EXPLANATION:

This is a contract for publication in a scholarly journal. In an earlier clause, the author assigned her copyright; in this clause the publisher grants back to the author the right to republish the article in a book of her work or in a work that she edits; the author must notify the publisher of the reuse of the article, and credit the first publication in the journal. The grant-back allows the author considerable freedom to recycle her work, but it does not appear to extend to permitting the author to post her work on a collective website (which would consist of many authors' work, and would not be edited by the contracting author).