Contributors must retain the copyright of their authored work or have permission from the copyright holder to submit the work.  For works by multiple authors, while contributors should also work with co-authors on submissions, though only one author needs to actually fill out and complete a submission.  

Please note that Library and IR administrators must follow publisher policies and copyright law, and may need to contact you for information and verification on retained copyright of your authored works and/or republishing rights.  

For general information about copyright, please visit the Guide to Copyright. 

Even though they are the authors of their work, contributors may not actually still own the copyright to the work.  This is especially common with published scholarly articles, as publishers often ask the author(s) to assign their rights to the publisher.  Contributors should consider the following options to check permissions: 

• Contributors unsure of their ability to upload the full-text copy of their work can usually find their rights in the author agreement signed with the publisher after submitting your manuscript.  Look for a section or statement in the agreement on your rights for self-archiving, submitting to institutional repositories or archives, author’s rights, and/or republishing rights. 
• If the original signed agreement is not available, a great resource to utilize when determining permissions is SHERPA/RoMEO.  This website allows you to look up publishers or specific journals by title or ISSN and see what their republish policies are.  To look up a journal where your work was published, visit SHERPA/RoMEO. 
• If the journal isn’t listed there, contributors can also check the publisher’s website, which sometimes lists such information.  
• Finally, anyone with copyright questions can also reach out to Library staff.  

Permissions to submit the full-text of a scholarly article may vary by the version of the article being submitted.  It is important to understand the difference when reviewing your rights to republish your work.  Differences may exist between the pre-print (your original submitted manuscript), post-print (the refereed, reviewed copy), and the published version.  It is common for a publisher to not allow a copy of the final published version, but allow a pre-print or post-print copy for archiving in an institutional repository like the UA. For more details, visit SHERPA/RoMEO’s “Glossary” page. 

Additionally, work published in an open-access journal is often published under a Creative Commons license.  See the terms of the specific Creative Commons license used for details.  For more about Creative Commons, visit “About the License.”

For authors working on new works, we highly encourage seeking amendments to agreements that permit re-publishing of the article (at a minimum in pre-print form) in an institutional repository like the UA.  SPARC Open’s Author Addendum is a popular option for authors and provides an amendment you can use or adapt.  

Your rights and permissions for other works, like articles published in trade-publications and other non-scholarly serials or websites, will also vary and depend on any signed agreements between the author and publisher.

If submitting a full-text copy for archiving and preservation is not possible, typically a citation and link to the published version of the work do not require seeking or finding permissions.