Is it legal to upload our scientific articles that are a published in non-open-access journals in other websites? What about the Journals copyrights?
I ask this question aiming to discuss the copyrights of the scientific Journals. Of course the journals have a great rule in publishing the articles to all humans in the world. But, unfortunately, the copyrights of journal articles don’t expire. What is the true way to upload our scientific articles without breaking the ethical rules?
Why do not the editors pay the authors of the work by purchasing their copyrights, but in return ask for a fee for its publication and reading? Does the fee for publications 70 years ago (the practice of some journals with IF) support the development of science and knowledge? Is this moral?
It is an infringement of copyrights to upload the copy of the final version of the published articles in other websites. However, other formats such as uncorrected version of the proofs can be uploaded. Earlier, authors were issued a final version of PDF article with a watermark "Authors personal copy". Those formats of articles can be uploaded. Currently, publishers like Elsevier stopped issuing such watermarked format to authors.
That's one side of the coin. Let me present the other side of the coin. Universities from developing and under developed countries do not have surplus fund for subscription of journal articles. Many of them subscribe only limited articles. I struggled too much to get literature for my PhD work. I used to put hundreds of mails to authors to send their copy of articles. Hence, if published articles are kept by authors in some websites, it would really be beneficial for researchers from those countries.
Research publication is a huge business across the globe. Leading publishers keep on increasing the subscription fee annually. On the other hand, authors, reviewers and editors contribute freely to publishers except in cases related to book chapters and edited books. Hence, publishers make huge profit without any or little investment. They do not keep even 10% of articles for free access in return.
I worked in a private university in INDIA some years ago. They subscribed very few journals due to high cost of subscription fee. Due to steep raise in subscription fee, they subsequently stopped subscription. We were really affected and struggled a lot to collect articles to continue our research. Currently, there is a Russian website available to download articles from all leading publishers. Although, leading publishers put case against them, it will not cause major loss to them. Because, universities from developed countries will not stop subscription. Those publishers will continue to plunder money from those universities annually.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49906/title/Major-German-Universities-Cancel-Elsevier-Contracts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
Depends on the publisher. Check with the journal. There is an option which you can check before you upload your article on RG for example.
Depends on the publisher idea - see journal colour on the SHERPA/ROMEO database.
Why do not the editors pay the authors of the work by purchasing their copyrights, but in return ask for a fee for its publication and reading? Does the fee for publications 70 years ago (the practice of some journals with IF) support the development of science and knowledge? Is this moral?
Am I breaching copyright by uploading my publication’s full-text?
Self-archiving permissions vary between publishers and journals. You can find details of many publisher copyright policies on Sherpa/RoMEO. If your publication is correctly linked to its journal on ResearchGate, you can also find general publisher conditions for it by clicking the Show self-archiving restrictions link at the bottom of its ResearchGate page. Here you’ll see a classification color: green means you can generally upload a full-text, blue or yellow means you should check your individual article conditions, and white means self-archiving is generally not permitted.
You should always check your publisher conditions to make sure you are not breaching copyright conditions. If you aren’t permitted to make your full-text publicly available, you always have the option to send it to another researcher privately. You can do this in a private message or by clicking Send privately when you receive a full-text request from someone...
https://explore.researchgate.net/display/support/Full-texts
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php
Dear Mohamed Reda Salem
As a result, it is investment in science and scientific research and the largest beneficiary financially journals and publishers, not researchers.
As for the basic subject, it depends entirely on the rules and conditions of the publication of each journals separately, there is usually a form signed by the applicant as not previously submitted for publication in other scientific journals
Dear @Mohamed, here are three very related research questions to this one of yours. There are many fine answers and good resources.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_legal_to_upload_Publishers_pdf_version_of_scientific_articles_from_non-open-access_journals_on_ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_ResearchGates_promotion_of_user_author_self-archiving_help_or_harm_the_cause_of_open_access_publishing
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_is_ResearchGate_dealing_with_copyright_issues_when_posting_our_papers
legally it is not permissible to post the articles published in non-OA journals
It depends on the journal's permission to republish the article in other websites, but usually, when it's non-open access, it is illegal to republish the full article in other websites. For a more definitive answer, you need to read copyright permissions from the journal's website or to contact them directly.
If the abstract of the article was shown in the journal's website publicly, only the title and the abstract can be posted on other websites with a link to the original webpage of the article.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Academic Journals