Copyright of your article
This Editorial hopes to provide a simple explanation as to how The Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine deals with copyright of your article.
Copyright is a type of intellectual property which exists to protect the rights of the owner of the work; this could be the author of a piece of writing or the person/s responsible for the original production of any images or infographics used within it. The owner of a work could also be an author's place of employment.
When a paper is submitted, the production team will ask the author to confirm they have permission for any third-party content in the article and also prior to publication a request will be made to the author to ‘transfer copyright’ of the article to the publisher allowing for them to distribute it to relevant audiences, providing a controlled level of exposure. Such an agreement prevents any unauthorised party downloading or copying the article and distributing it on the open internet.
The term ‘transfer of copyright’ may seem rather final and not sound like something an author would want to do. It is not however as limiting as it sounds and there are many options available for the author.
The journal publishers and owners will only ever request transfer of copyright for the complete ‘finished published article’ as it appears either in print or online and not for example the individual images within a piece or the version that is initially accepted prior to editing and typesetting. The copyright of the individual images remains with the copyright holder and this is noted in writing within the journal.
An accomplished writer or committed reader may already be aware of the choices available to authors; however they are summarised simply below;
Contributor-owned work - this is work entirely created by the author free from contract using their own time and resources (if third-party images are used permission must be sought).
Company/Institution owned work – this would cover any work carried out as part of a contract of employment using company time and resources.
Government owned work – this covers any work carried out as part of official duties as a government employee (termed crown copyright in the UK).
Funded work (e.g. NIH/Wellcome) - if any of the work was carried out as a result of funding from an external party this must be declared.
So what can an author do with the submission?
Submitted version
Following publication of the final version, the submitted version can be shared with colleagues, placed on a personal website or stored in a company's/institutions archives but it must carry notification that it is the unedited non-peer reviewed version providing a link to the final published version.
Accepted version
There are agreements in place with major funding bodies such as the NIH and the Wellcome Trust which is why any funding received from bodies such as these must be declared. These agreements allow the peer-reviewed and ‘accepted version’ to be made available by the publisher to repositories such as PubMed Central.
Final published version
The author may share the final published version of a paper with colleagues should they request to see it, copies must not be sent on by those colleagues or posted to a listserve. The author can republish the work (please contact the publisher should you wish to do this on “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected]) although this excludes publication as another journal article. The final version can be used by the author in their teaching materials (non-commercial) and oral presentations.
Finally, the final version must not be distributed openly via the Internet or posted on social media.
Hopefully this will provide some simple clarification which will be applicable to most situations, if you have any further questions contact the publishing team.
Editor