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Edit Your Copyright Transfer Agreement Contract

I’d just like to point out to anyone who asks, particularly CRC Press (part of Taylor&Francis Group, who are in turn part of Informa PLC) that by posting the full text of my book chapter to Academia.edu I am *not* breaching the copyright transfer agreement I signed.

Upon receiving a copyright transfer agreement as a PDF from them via email – I edited the PDF to reword the agreement to terms that were more agreeable to me (e.g. I did NOT want to transfer my copyright to them for my work).

The bit of wording I changed is as follows:

As such, copyrights in the Work will not inure to the benefit of the Publisher, the Publisher will not own the publication, its title and component parts, and all publication rights. This does not permit the Publisher, in its name, to copyright in the Contribution, make applications to register its copyright claim, and to renew its copyright certificate.

I signed this reworded form as PDF (displayed below, signature removed) and returned it to them. I have now kindly received a free ‘author copy’ of the printed book and my chapter has clearly been included so it’s too late for CRC press to exclude my chapter. I can only assume they agreed to the reworded terms of the contract I signed and sent them.

I doubt CRC press would even be bothered by my actions to be honest. They are allowing another of their books to be completely posted online for free, so in comparison to that, my action here is puny – but it certainly emboldens me for the next time I may have to sign a CTA form…

CRC Press are welcome to non-exclusively publish my book chapter. Thank you CRC Press for agreeing to my terms and conditions.

Contract

Lessons one might learn from this exercise:

DO NOT GIVE AWAY THE COPYRIGHT TO YOUR WORK!
PUBLISHERS DO NOT ‘NEED’ ALL YOUR COPYRIGHT TRANSFERRED TO THEM TO PUBLISH.
ALL THAT IS NEEDED IS FOR YOU TO GRANT THEM A NON-EXCLUSIVE LICENSE TO PUBLISH.

A word of warning though… I wouldn’t recommend relying on this method of editing CTA’s to get what you want. I was just lucky this time. Choosing an open access publication venue from the start is always the best option (if possible).

See also:

Mike Taylor 2010. Who Owns My Sauropod History Paper?
http://svpow.com/2010/10/13/who-owns-my-sauropod-history-paper/


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3 responses to “Edit Your Copyright Transfer Agreement Contract”

  1. Charles Oppenheim Avatar
    Charles Oppenheim

    I have been doing precisely this for many years for book chapters and journal articles without any problem whatsoever; sometimes the publishers have tried “we cannot agree to your changes”, but after I persist, they relent.

  2. […] notice as long as it’s signed & doesn’t look too different. It’s cheeky, but I got away with it for a book chapter once. Be careful to remove / replace the term ‘work for hire’ – it may look like an […]