Rockefeller University Press allows authors to retain copyright to their published work

“Our copyright and public-access policies simply acknowledge who did the work and who paid for it to be done,” says Rossner. “Clearly, the peer-review and publication processes add value to the work, but, in our opinion, that does not give the publisher an exclusive right to it.”

The terms of the new policy stipulate additional provisions designed to achieve a balance between granting wide access to content and preserving revenue for the press. The press prohibits the creation of mirror Web sites within the first six months after publication, in order to retain essential revenue derived from journal subscriptions. After six months, articles are open to reuse under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License from Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers tools for the creation of “some rights reserved” copyrights. The press retains purview — along with authors — over commercial reuse.

The new policy, which was drafted with the assistance of the university’s Office of General Counsel, also applies retroactively. Authors who assigned copyright for past work to The Rockefeller University Press are now granted the right to use the work in any way. All work published prior to November 1, 2007 is subject to the Creative Commons license, and all work published since then is subject to the six-month restriction on mirror sites.

The Rockefeller University Press, founded in 1905, is a nonprofit publisher whose journals are edited by active scientists. The press places a strong emphasis on preserving the integrity of primary research data and has garnered international attention as a pioneer in the application of new technologies to achieve that goal. All of the content of the three press journals is also posted on PubMed Central, the online database of scientific articles run by the National Library of Medicine, where it is available to the public six months after publication.