Licensing, Copyright & Author Agreements

Overview

An author asks to reuse a figure from her own article and you are not sure whether she can. A reviewer wants to know if he may share a manuscript with a student. A funder asks for the license on a 2019 paper and there is no record. The journal has been running on assumptions about copyright, and assumptions do not survive an indexing application, a dispute or a change of publisher.

Licensing, Copyright & Author Agreements puts the journal’s rights framework in order. We help you choose the license (or set of licenses) that fits your funding model, funder landscape and discipline; draft an author agreement that says plainly what authors keep and what they grant; add reviewer and editor agreements covering confidentiality, conflicts and conduct; and configure the platform so agreements are collected and stored with each submission.

It is for journals that have never had proper agreements, journals changing license or publishing model, and institutions consolidating several journals under one rights framework.

What’s Included

• License decision brief — the realistic options for your journal (Creative Commons variants, copyright retained by author with license to publish, or transfer where a case exists), what each means for authors, readers, funders and indexing, and our recommendation.
• Author agreement — copyright and license terms, warranties, third-party material, data and code, prior publication and preprints, and what happens on withdrawal or retraction, written in plain language.
• Reviewer agreement — confidentiality, conflicts of interest, use of AI tools, and expected conduct.
• Editor and board member agreement — role, term, conflicts, confidentiality and the journal’s independence from its owner.
• Platform configuration — agreements presented and accepted at submission, review invitation and appointment, with records stored against each article or person.
• Public policy pages — copyright, licensing, reuse and self-archiving policy text for the journal site, consistent with the agreements.
• Back-catalog guidance — how to handle articles published before the new agreements, including retrospective licensing where authors consent.

How It Works

1. We review the current agreements, license statements and platform settings, and confirm the funding model and funder landscape.
2. We deliver the license decision brief and agree the direction with the journal’s owner.
3. We draft the agreements and policy pages and revise them with you (and your counsel, if you choose).
4. We configure the platform and hand over a records procedure.
5. Optional: we run the back-catalog relicensing with authors.

Priced per journal. Institutions applying one framework across several journals receive a portfolio rate.

What Stays With Your Editors

Agreements govern rights and conduct, not editorial judgment. Your editors keep full authority over reviewer selection, editorial assessment and acceptance. The editor agreement we draft protects that independence in writing. NeucitePress drafts, configures and runs the records process.

Important Limitations

• We are publishing specialists, not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. Our agreements follow established publishing practice; where your institution’s counsel wants to review them, we supply documents structured for a quick review, and we recommend that step.
• Where the agreements are intended to satisfy an indexing database, inclusion is decided solely by each database. NeucitePress prepares, remediates and submits but cannot sell inclusion.
• We cannot relicense back-catalog articles without each author’s consent.
• Clear agreements protect the journal; they do not by themselves bring submissions, citations or ranking.

Common Questions

Should authors keep copyright?
In most open-access models, yes: authors retain copyright and grant the journal a license to publish. We explain when a transfer might still be appropriate and what it costs you in funder compliance if you choose it.

Do we really need a reviewer agreement?
Indexing evaluators and ethics bodies increasingly expect one, and it is the only place you can set expectations about confidentiality and AI use before a problem arises.

Can this be combined with funder compliance work?
Yes. The two are usually scoped together, since license choice drives most of the compliance configuration.

Request a proposal, or begin with the Journal Health Check.