Harvard University, SEAS seal
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Stuart M. Shieber

Alternative Copyright Assignments

It is important for authors of scholarly articles to retain rights to openly distribute their work, and it is simple to do so. For authors at most institutions who are not covered by a rights-retaining open-access policy (the "Harvard-style open access policy"), you can attach an Author's Addendum to any copyright assignment that the publisher wants you to sign. I recommend one of the Science Commons addenda, which have superseded the SPARC addendum on which they are based. Science Commons provides an addendum generator to simplify the process. For those who are covered by a rights-retaining open-access policy, you may want to attach to publication agreements an addendum informing the publisher of the prior nonexclusive license that the policy specifies. Harvard provides an addendum generator for this purpose.

In the past, I recommended the use of some home-grown alternative copyright agreements, but these have been superseded by the Science Commons addendum approach. For historical purposes, I still provide them here.


Copyright Assignment
  1. By the signature below, Stuart M. Shieber (the ``Author'') hereby grants to Mega Publishing House (the ``Publisher''), publisher of Journal of Erroneous Results (the ``Journal''), effective as of the date of this agreement, copyright to the article entitled ``Generation of Energy from Pure Thought'' (the ``Article'').
  2. The Author explicitly reserves the following rights:
    1. All proprietary rights other than copyright, such as patent rights.
    2. The right to reproduce and distribute copies of the Article by hardcopy or electronically, including but not limited to photocopy, email, FTP, and on-line server distribution, provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage; and
    3. The right to use all or part of the Article in any future works of any of the Author, including, but not limited to, lectures, reviews, articles, textbooks, or reprint books.
    As a condition of reserving these rights, the Author agrees that the Publisher and the Journal will be given first publication credit whenever such distribution or publication occurs.
  3. This is the entire agreement between the Author and the Publisher, and it may be modified only in writing. It will bind and benefit our respective successors in interest, including assignees, and our licensees. It will terminate if the Publisher does not publish the Article in the Journal within one year of the date of the Author's signature below.
_______________________________ _________________
Stuart M. Shieber
33 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138		 Date


Copyright License
  1. By the signature below, Stuart M. Shieber (the ``Author'') hereby grants to Mega Publishing House (the ``Publisher''), publisher of Journal of Erroneous Results (the ``Journal''), effective as of the date of this agreement, a nonexclusive license to publish the article entitled ``Generation of Energy from Pure Thought'' (the ``Article'') in the Journal.
  2. The Author explicitly reserves all other proprietary rights including copyright and patent rights.
  3. This is the entire agreement between the Author and the Publisher, and it may be modified only in writing. It will bind and benefit our respective successors in interest, including assignees, and our licensees. It will terminate if the Publisher does not publish the Article in the Journal within one year of the date of the Author's signature below.
_______________________________ _________________
Stuart M. Shieber
33 Oxford St.
Cambridge, MA 02138		 Date