What a publishing agreement hands over
An author who signs a publishing agreement gives a publisher some of the rights in a work and keeps others. Copyright is a bundle of rights that can be transferred separately, the assignment has to be made by whoever holds the rights, what an author may still do with the work depends on the terms of the agreement rather than on whether it is called an assignment or a licence, and rights transferred to a publisher can come back to the author.
Copyright as a bundle of rights
Copyright is not a single right but a bundle of rights, like a fistful of spaghetti held tightly together, in which each strand can be sold, licensed or transferred on its own. At the top level the bundle is the five main exclusive rights that US copyright law listed for the holder in 2008: copying, reproduction, creation of derivative works, public performance and public display. Each of these divides into smaller pieces that are themselves independently transferable, in principle without limit. For example, the author of a book on a new medical procedure may assign exclusive reproduction and distribution rights to one publisher for the United States, another for Europe and a third for the rest of the world, and a novelist may assign film rights while keeping the right to write new novels based on the book. When a book is to appear in print, the contract transfers certain specific and limited rights from the author to the publisher: it may convey hard-cover publication rights only, for example, with the paperback under a different contract.
What the publisher asks for
A publisher that takes on the work of publishing, in return for disseminating the author's research, increasing their academic credibility and possibly enhancing their job prospects, can help protect the work from being pirated or falsely attributed to someone else. In return, the publisher often requires the freedom to use the work for the purposes agreed in the agreement, and may require copyright assignment.
In 2007 most medical journals specified that authors must transfer copyright to the publisher, and the terms of copyright should always be clarified, with the editor, whenever work is handed over to a publication. The transfer can be waived in some circumstances, for example where the information cannot be copyrighted because it comes from a government source. Many journals by then required only that authors give the journal the exclusive right to publish the article in print and electronically, while the author retained copyright, and the same arrangement can be requested for chapters contributed to edited books. One guide for medical writers holds that for a contributing author this arrangement is probably the best, because it leaves the author free to use the work elsewhere without obtaining permission. In 2012 journals were beginning to ask for an exclusive licence to publish instead of copyright assignment, a change that one writer holds makes little difference to the publisher's business or to the author's rights but often makes authors feel better.
A contract for a book chapter should be read carefully for its terms on permissions, because it is often the individual author's responsibility rather than the editor's to obtain permission for reproduced material such as photographs. The book's editor or publisher may require written proof that this has been done, and can usually advise on the best approach to requesting permission from the original source.
Who has to sign
Submission itself does not transfer the rights. A statement in the guide for authors that submitting to the journal assigns copyright to the journal does not make it so, and the assumption is not legally watertight in every jurisdiction. As with a website's terms and conditions, the authors, or the rights owner where that is someone else, must assert the assignment or grant a licence, usually either through the online submission system or by signing and returning an assignment form offline.
Nor does the lead author own the copyright alone. All contributing authors share joint copyright ownership in a jointly authored article, and someone who created all the figures owns sole copyright in them. So in theory every author should sign the copyright assignment form, but common practice is to ask only the lead or corresponding author, which is legally dubious.
An author who cannot assign copyright can still publish in most quality journals, which allow a licence-to-publish agreement in that case. The case can arise, for example, when the author works for a large organisation that owns the copyright in all the work it generates and is unwilling to assign it to anyone else. Employees of the World Health Organization do not own copyright in articles they create as part of their work, so the organisation signs the permissions form as the rights owner and grants only a licence to publish, reserving the copyright.
What the author keeps
An author does not need to keep copyright to keep their name on the work, because the Berne Convention includes the moral right of attribution. The right is not enforced in every country, the USA among them, but it can be assumed to be usually honoured in the scholarly environment, and where it is not honoured, assigning copyright or not makes no difference. In some countries, such as the UK, an author can waive the moral right to be identified as the author, while many European countries, such as France, do not allow the waiver. The moral right of attribution also covers the right not to be associated with an article the author did not write.
Whether the author may still reuse the work depends on the agreement rather than on whether copyright was signed over. Some publishers who require copyright allow authors to reuse their work freely, while some who ask only for a licence to publish attach conditions that allow the author to do very little with the work afterwards. A publisher that asks only for a licence to publish may require an exclusive licence, which bars the author from republishing the work for commercial or non-commercial reasons even though the author still holds the copyright. Most good publishers let authors retain the right to reuse their work for non-commercial reasons such as training without asking permission, and an author will almost certainly be able to produce derivative works, such as a book chapter, without permission. Copyright protects the expression of an idea and not the idea itself, so research written up as an article can be rewritten as a book chapter or a presentation without infringing the copyright. The author must read and understand the contract they sign.
The authors of an accepted manuscript are often required to sign copyright over to the publisher, so later reproduction of parts of that manuscript may breach copyright, and different publishers have different rules on how much text may be reused without permission. A number of journals do allow authors to retain copyright, and the fair-use clause, which permits limited reproduction of one's own work for specific purposes, affords some room for manoeuvre.
Negotiating reuse terms
The publishing contract may offer the chance to ask to be consulted if the work is to be published later in another publication or another format, such as online, on CD-ROM or in a different language.
An author may want to use published work for personal projects, such as handouts at events where they regularly speak on the topic, or a website relating to their specialty. Some publishers do not require a grant of copyright, which leaves the author free to reuse the information, and the terms of such personal use may be agreed beforehand. Posting the article itself on a personal website is a separate question: some publishers allow only a link from the author's website to the article they have published online, while others allow the work on the author's website with written permission and may specify that it references the original published source.
When the rights come back
A transfer of rights usually does not last forever, and a publishing contract generally includes a reversion-of-rights clause that returns control of the publishing rights from the publisher to the author. In 2008 more than 200,000 new book titles were published each year, and only a very small number remained perennial sellers. Sometimes reversion is automatic once a book has gone out of print, a term the contract may define as sales falling below a stated number of units, and sometimes the author must send a written request even when every other condition has been met. An author who may be entitled to reversion should review the contract and write to the publisher's rights and permissions department for clarification on reclaiming the rights.
For many authors going out of print is not definitively the end of a book's life. An author can explore several ways to extend it: republishing with another publisher, print-on-demand publishing, and online marketing, sales and content delivery. Where there is call to photocopy or electronically distribute the work in a corporate or academic setting, the Copyright Clearance Center offers to provide permissions for that reuse of previously published works so that they may earn the author royalties where appropriate.