KPU faculty and students own the rights to the work they produce. This opposes many publisher's drafted agreements that transfer copyright from author to publisher.
If you intend to make your work openly available through open access by depositing it in a repository, or if you are required to do so by your funding agency (such as through the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications), it’s important to retain your right to archive your work.
Following the peer-review process and after an article has been accepted for publication, publishers require authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement or license to publish consent form before proceeding with formal publication. At this point you most likely are happy that your work will be published, so you may be inclined to sign anything they ask. Publishers also often claim that they need the exclusive copyright to your work in order to be able to publish it. Ask yourself the following:
Check Sherpa/Romeo for the archiving permissions that are normally included with a publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Publisher policies can be complex. Visit Sherpa/Romeo help for instructions on how to interpret the publisher policy, or contact us for assistance.
Review the descriptions of document versions for details about how to identify the pre-print, post-print, and publisher versions.
When the standard copyright agreement limits your rights as an author, you can negotiate with your publisher the retention of your right to reproduce, reuse and publicly present your work for non-commercial purposes. Choose one of the following addendums to apply to your publisher agreement.
SPARC Canadian Author Addendum
Use this Addendum to secure a more balanced agreement with Canadian funding agencies by retaining select rights, such as the right to reproduce, reuse, and publicly present the articles you publish for non-commercial purposes.
This form complies with granting council public access policies, such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Policy on Access to Research Outputs.
SPARC Author Addendum
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition created this addendum for authors to preserve key rights as the author of the journal article.
Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine
Generate a PDF form which you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright transfer agreement, and which reserves certain rights for the author.