Scholarly Communications & Publishing

This guide from the A.R. Dykes Library at the University of Kansas Medical Center covers the basics of how to read a copyright agreement before publishing. Other pages in this guide give tips on how to negotiate your author rights as well as information on evaluating publishers.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has developed Author Rights – an educational initiative that informs faculty across all disciplines about their copyrights, and how to use the SPARC Author Addendum to effectively manage your rights as a journal article author to ensure that your article can be accessed and used as broadly as possible.

The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. The Author Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.

This open access textbook provides an in-depth look at the self-publishing process. While it is focused on self-publishing open textbooks, many of the topics covered are applicable to all forms of self-publishing.

This list maintained by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) rates self-publishing platforms based upon how well their policies align with the ALLi code of standards. Platforms can purchase a membership to be included on the list but their policies must still meet the ALLi standards in order to receive a positive rating. This list can serve as a resource for authors looking for a self-publishing platform.