Clause 13

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

CLAUSE TEXT:

This assignment is subject to reservation by the authors of the following rights:

a. The author(s) reserves all proprietary rights, other than copyright, such as patent rights.

b. The author(s) reserves the right after publication of the WORK by [publisher], to use all or part of the WORK in compilations or other publications of the author's own works, to use figures and tables created by them and contained in the WORK, and to make copies of all or part of the WORK for the author's use for lectures, classroom instruction, or similar uses.

c. The author(s) reserves the right to post and update the WORK on e-print servers provided that [files types specific to the journal] are not used and that a link to the WORK in [journal's online service] is included.

d. The author(s) reserves the right to post the WORK (in PDF) on the author's web page provided that a link to the article in [journal's online service] is included.

e. The author(s) reserves the right to deposit his or her final manuscript in [an online repository] on acceptance for publication by [journal] and to request public access immediately upon publication by [journal] if the author(s) has paid the [journal's] open access fee.

EXPLANATION:

This is a grant-back clause from a contract for publication of an article in a scientific journal. This kind of clause appears, generally, after a clause in which the publisher acquires all the rights (or very nearly all rights) to a work. It means that the author - having signed away his copyright in the work - "gets back" some rights to the work. Here, for instance, the author may:

(a) retain any proprietary rights in the work except for copyright. This is particularly used in the context of scientific journals where the article may contain patentable information. (b) use the work in compilations or books that the author creates, use the data in the article for other purposes (again, a right mostly pertinent to scientific articles) or copy the work for educational purposes.

(c) update the work and post this revision on-line(with certain restrictions as to file types used and provided there is a link to the journal's online site).

(d) post the work on his webpage as long as their is a link to the journal's online site.

(e) to deposit the final manuscript in a journal-affiliated online repository and have access to it (for a fee). Grant-back clauses take some of the sting out of total assignments, but leave the author on the short end of the stick in the event of uncertainty: because the author gave everything up, any ambiguity will concern what the author gets back, and to the extent there is a doubt, the publisher's rights prevail.