Academic Publishing

Digital publishing means authors have several choices to make about where, when, and how their work is disseminated. It has also raised new concerns about quality and impact. Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to explore their publishing options and to actively manage and curate their academic presence online.

RESOURCES FOR AUTHORS

Publishing Contracts and Author Rights

When you submit an article for review and publication, you will be asked to sign a standard agreement that transfers most or all of your copyrights to the publisher. After you sign the contract, the publisher makes all of the decisions about distribution, access, pricing, updates, and use restrictions, including when and how you can use your own work.

Transferring copyright doesn't have to be all or nothing. Publishers need certain non-exclusive rights: the right to publish and sell the work, to receive attribution and citation as the first place of publication, the ability to migrate the work to future formats, and the right to include it in its collections.

Most faculty want to retain the rights to use and develop their own work without restriction for teaching, for future research or publications, or to archive the work. As the author, you can modify or addend your publishing contracts to retain these rights.

Further reading and additional resources

• Author Rights: Common Misperceptions <https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/general-information-about-open-access/author-rights-common-misperceptions/>
• Author Rights <http://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/brochure-html/>
• An Introduction to Publishing Agreements for Authors <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/files/2009/05/authors_publishing_intro-tka1.pdf>
• Know Your Rights: Who Really Owns Your Scholarly Works? <http://scholcomm.columbia.edu/know-your-rights-who-really-owns-your-scholarly-works>

Negotiating with Publishers

Before you sign a contract, read it carefully to understand what rights you are transferring. There are two main approaches to revising publishing contracts: negotiating a new contract with the publisher, or adding an author addendum.

The ASU Libraries Negotiating Guide <http://libguides.asu.edu/c.php?g=263877&p=1765373> gives detailed advice on how to negotiate prior to signing any paperwork. Keep Your Copyrights <http://web.law.columbia.edu/keep-your-copyrights> analyzes common contract clauses, explains them in plain English, and rates them on a scale of “creator friendly” to “incredibly overreaching.” They also provide before-and-after examples of sample contract language.

The Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine <http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/> and SPARC <http://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/> recommend authors attach an addendum to a signed contract that stipulates which rights the author will retain.

Determining Your Rights for Previously Published Works

If you want to re-use or re-purpose content that is already published, you must first check your contract to see what is allowed.
• Check the original publishing agreement for details.
• Look at the publisher's website to find their policies, or contact them directly.
• Search Sherpa/RoMEO <http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/> to find the standard agreement for your publisher, or use one of their permission request templates to formally request permission from the publisher.

You should always keep your own final version of the article (with peer review edits) as a word document, even after you receive the publisher’s final proof and your own copy of the published PDF.

For published books and monographs, Understanding Rights Reversion: When, Why & How to Regain Copyright and Make Your Book More Available <http://authorsalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/Documents/Guides/Authors Alliance - Understanding Rights Reversion.pdf> provides guidance on how to increase your book's availability by bringing out-of-print books back into print, or converting them to eBook formats and publishing them online.

EVALUATING PUBLISHERS

Before submitting your work to a publisher, evaluate them carefully. Examine their goals, target audiences, and special interests. Consult with colleagues and librarians to review journal policies, and to determine prestige, editorial efficiency, and quality of marketing and advertising. The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Evaluating Journals <http://acrl.libguides.com/scholcomm/toolkit/evaluating> provides a detailed checklist for determining journal quality.

Predatory Publishing

Predatory publishing is an exploitive business model where authors are charged fees without receiving the editorial or publishing services associated with legitimate journals. These journals fail to follow accepted standards or best practices of scholarly publishing, make false claims, and do not deliver on agreements.

Legitimate open access journals may still charge a one-time author fee to cover production costs, but the work will be made permanently free for readers. The publisher should be transparent about business practices, have subject experts on editorial and peer-review boards, and offer copyediting and proofreading services.

Beall’s List <https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/> is a trusted resource for identifying predatory publishers, in accordance with Jeffrey Beall’s Criteria for Determining Predatory Open Access Publishers <https://scholarlyoa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/criteria-2015.pdf>.

RESEARCHER IDENTIFIERS

Workshops

The CSU-Pueblo library regularly offers workshops for faculty, students, and staff on creating and using researcher identifiers and academic profiles. Upcoming events are listed on the events page. Department chairs and individual faculty are also encouraged to contact Scholarly Communications Services to request a workshop.

Academic Profiles

Building your academic profile online is a way to demonstrate your authority and area of expertise, identify your research interests, and find potential collaborators. Creating and managing your profile gives you control over the information available about you, and ensures other researchers are finding correct and complete information. There are several profile platforms available with slightly different focuses:
• Researcher communities such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate
• Reference management tools with social functions like Mendeley
• Search engines with author profiles and citation tracking such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and ResearcherID

Researcher Identifiers

Author identifiers, or researcher identifiers, are permanent, unique identifiers attached to online publications that address common issues in author ambiguity:
• One author publishing under multiple versions of the same name, e.g., middle initials
• Common names
• Name changes, e.g., marriage
• Cultural differences in naming

There are both commercial and non-profit researcher identifier systems, all of which provide a persistent numerical identifier associated with your public name, and integrate across multiple platforms.

Common Researcher Identifiers [Accordion]

ORCID

Library Rating: Essential - get one, and use it!

ORCID is a free, persistent digital identifier that is used by numerous commercial and government funding organizations, publishers, and universities (including CSU-Pueblo). It links to other identifiers (ResearcherID, Scopus) and systems (LinkedIn, Google Scholar) and offers a range of privacy settings.

Use your ORCID when:
• Applying for funding
• Submitting manuscripts
• Renewing membership with professional organizations
• Accepting peer review assignments
• Submitting works to the CSU-Pueblo Digital Repository <link>
• Updating your personal webpage and CV

Create an ORCID <http://support.orcid.org/knowledgebase/articles/171598-create-an-id-website-user>

ResearcherID

Library Rating: Highly recommended, especially if you have publications in the Web of Science database.

ResearcherID is a free author identifier, online community, and search system from Thomson Reuters, integrated with Web of Science and EndNote. It includes Web of Science publications and can import from other sources and recommends linking to ORCID. Users can search and view author profiles, obtain citation metrics, and track citations.

Register for a ResearcherID <http://wokinfo.com/researcherid/>

Google Scholar

Library Rating: Recommended

Google Scholar does not provide a unique digital identifier, but it does allow users to link publications from various publishers, including institutional repositories and other open access sources. It also provides basic citation metrics.

Create a Google Scholar profile <http://scholar.google.com/>
Managing Google Scholar <http://blog.impactstory.org/impact-challenge-day-3-google-scholar/>

Scopus Author Identifier

Library Rating: Recommend checking periodically for errors.

The Scopus identifier is an automatically generated identifier from Elsevier. Unlike other profiles, users cannot create or edit their own profiles. It is limited to articles indexed in Scopus and provides citation metrics. Users should check Scopus periodically to ensure information is correct, and request changes as needed.

Check profile at Scopus <https://www.scopus.com/freelookup/form/author.uri>
Request changes to Scopus profile <http://help.scopus.com/Content/h_authorfeedback.htm>

Recommended - Created for you if you have publications indexed in Scopus, check to see if it exists and monitor for errors.