Rights and permissions in publishing

This branch covers copyright and permission to publish or reuse material, divided by the rights question involved: protection and ownership, publishing agreements, licences and exceptions, individual permission requests and generative AI. Plagiarism and text recycling as professional conduct, and consent to publish a patient’s story, belong to neighbouring topics.

• What copyright protects and who owns it — protected expression, duration, international protection, ownership, enforcement and trademarks
• What a publishing agreement hands over — transferable rights, publisher requirements, signatures, author reuse, negotiation and reversion
• Licences and exceptions for routine copying — legal exceptions, collective and organisational licences, and licences attached to guidelines and websites
• Asking permission to reuse published material — attribution, material requiring permission, requests, rights holders, responses, fees, free images and publisher limits
• Copyright questions raised by generative AI — training data, regulation, litigation, licensing, infringing output, protection of output and an author’s use of published work in a model