My very helpful librarian sent me a link to an author’s addendum for those contracts where you sign away your rights to publish your own article online. So next time a publisher sends me a contract, I can sign it and attach my copy of this addendum, making the contract palatable to me! Hooray! [edit: snipped grumpy unnecessary bit]
5 thoughts on “how to retain the right to publish your own work”
Leave A Comment
Recommended Posts
noah
Of course, sometimes the editor will do the negotiation ahead of time, on behalf of all contributors. You weren’t unhappy with any of the First Person agreement, were you?
Jill
Not at the time, I thought the First Person agreement was great! I still think it’s pretty good, though I’m not sure that it allows me to archive the my chapter in BORA. I actually emailed the MIT Press person named on the contract I signed just the other day to ask whether BORA archiving would be OK with them, and I expect they’ll answer.
And at the time it had never occurred to me that I’d want to archive the thing in BORA…
I should add that I really appreciate the work that editors do with publications. I probably sounded more gumpry in that post than I really am about it – I love seeing my work in print 🙂
noah
I’d be very surprised if there was any problem. I mean, the MITP folks would need to somehow construe BORA as an “edited volume.” I don’t think it makes any sense to call open access archives edited volumes, but since you’re checking on this issue it means that other contributors won’t have to.
Jill
I had a reply back today from MIT Press, saying they were quite happy for me to archive the First Person article in BORA; and that they’d appreciate me waiting six months after the publication of Second Person before putting my contribution to that book there, but after that it would be fine.
So yes, I’m happy with MIT Press 🙂
Eric
Thanks for posting this. Now, if I only had more articles ready for publication…