The Division Engagement Office and the Office of General Counsel received a question about whether it was okay for the author of an article in a division newsletter to publish a version of his article as part of a compilation of presentations from a conference.
Intellectual property rights are valuable and important components of publishing. Material that has been published in a division newsletter is copy, and the rights to that copy belong to an individual or entity. We recommend that divisions reduce content agreements to writing so there is no misunderstanding as to the owner of these rights. Therefore, we are sharing a basic copyright release formopens in new window with blanks that can be filled in by the editor and sent to authors.
If there is no formal agreement between the newsletter and the author about copyright, then by submitting the article for publication, the author is giving the newsletter an implied nonexclusive license to publish the work. Copyright does not transfer unless an explicit agreement is made, so the author retains the copyright unless he or she explicitly agrees otherwise.
Thus, the author with the original question can grant the right to print the copy to another publisher if the author wants. To avoid confusion, we recommend formalizing these rights in writing and suggest that newsletter editors ask authors to sign the copyright release form, making it clear that they are not transferring copyright but are granting a nonexclusive license to the newsletter to publish the work.