# Great News 🎉 Convinced a publisher to release their copy right back to authors!

**URL:** <https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524>\
**Category:** Open and replicable science\
**Created:** [January 7, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524 "2020-01-07T20:40:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lisa](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/onscienceandacademia.org/lisa/32/153_2.png) [@Lisa](https://onscienceandacademia.org/u/Lisa)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524/1 "2020-01-07T20:40:01Z")

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Hi all, Great news! We have successfully convinced a self publish Journal to let authors retain their copy right under CC-By 4.0 licence!!! Finally the publisher agree with our vision! and it’s the first step toward open Science! This is not easy in Asia, as most professors still don’t have the concept of letting author retain their copy right, it’s very traditional here!

The publisher ask me if the author need to sign an agreement for them to publish their work? and the publisher ask me to draft an agreement for them. Do author sign a document before publish? Is there any example that I can have a look? Is CC-BY 4.0 the best licence for author? any help will be appreciated!

Lisa

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**Author:** ![Enrico.Fucci](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/onscienceandacademia.org/enrico.fucci/32/101_2.png) [@Enrico.Fucci](https://onscienceandacademia.org/u/Enrico.Fucci)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 1:28pm UTC](https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524/2 "2020-01-09T13:28:10Z")

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Hi Lisa,

that sounds great! May I ask what journal is that?

Also, here some answers to your questions:

1. As Creative Commons suggest and argue for (see the link below), the best CC licence for an openly available scientific work is CC - 0 or “Public Domain” Licence.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/9j0eeh1E7cJCEz

1. Authors do normally sign a copyright/disclosure document before publishing. Here an example from PNAS

[PNAS copyright agreement.pdf](https://onscienceandacademia.org/uploads/short-url/t4NdE2bWBAOGAdWfK3vskIjVdo3.pdf) (32.1 KB)

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**Author:** ![rebecca](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/onscienceandacademia.org/rebecca/32/520_2.png) [@rebecca](https://onscienceandacademia.org/u/rebecca)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 9:11am UTC](https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524/3 "2020-01-10T09:11:13Z")

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Great news, Lisa!!

Perhaps @jon_tennant would have some thoughts too on a suitable license?

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**Author:** ![jon\_tennant](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/onscienceandacademia.org/jon_tennant/32/256_2.png) [@jon\_tennant](https://onscienceandacademia.org/u/jon_tennant)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2020, 10:10am UTC](https://onscienceandacademia.org/t/great-news-convinced-a-publisher-to-release-their-copy-right-back-to-authors/524/4 "2020-01-10T10:10:39Z")

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I think the most important thing to do is just make sure it’s a non-exclusive right to publish and that the author retains copyright. The SPARC author addendum is useful for this too: [https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/brochure-html/](https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/brochure-html/)