Negotiation of the agreement terms should be a normal part of publication process.

Several institutions and higher education organizations have drafted contract “addenda” that authors can use to be certain that they retain specified use rights regardless of the language of the publishers standard contract. These addenda are simply attached to the agreement when it is returned to the publisher and they enumerate rights that the author retains.

Even in cases where a publisher will not accept a contract addendum (as sometimes happens), it may still be possible to negotiate the agreement terms and the addendum can still be useful. Publishers have, on occasion, amended their publication agreement to include rights listed in an addendum even when they have declined to incorporate the document itself. In these situations, addenda can help authors consider which rights are most important for them to retain and clarify to the publisher the things that are most important for authors that should be considered as part of their standard agreements.

Some publishers are beginning to use online “click through” agreements in place of paper publication agreements. As part of an online submission process authors may be asked to agree to terms that will govern the publication; these terms are as determinative of an author’s rights as are more traditional contracts. In these situations, authors may need to take additional steps such as contacting the journal editors directly prior to submission in order to retain desired rights.

In many cases, the publisher or the Editor-in-Chief support the author’s future intended use and are willing to negotiate author’s rights. There are several methods to negotiate the terms of a publishing agreement.

Because publishers use form agreements and resist changes to its forms, it may be necessary to attach an addendum to the publishing agreement which expressly sets forth the rights retained by the author. Some publishers allow authors to insert in the text of the agreement the rights they wish to retain. The following is an example:

“If there are any elements in this manuscript for which the author(s) hold and want to retain copyright, please specify: __________________________.”

Some authors amend the publisher agreement form by crossing out the specific clauses that they do not agree with and inserting by hand the rights they wish to retain. Before doing so, review the publisher’s agreement form to make sure that there is no clause like the following that would create a conflict within the agreement:

“SIGN HERE FOR COPYRIGHT TRANSFER: I hereby certify that I am authorized to sign this document either in my own right or as an agent for my employer, and have made no changes to the current valid document. . .”

Any changes made directly on the form agreement must include the initials of the author and the initials of an authorized representative of the publisher, which are placed immediately adjacent to the handwritten or typewritten change.  Any changes made and initialed by the author will have no legal effect without the approval of the publisher.