Greg Newby <gbnewby@ils.unc.edu> writes:
Some electronic journals, some conferences and some print journals now let authors retain copyright or, if they keep copyright, allow authors to do what they please with their work.
Usenix is really good with this. You agree not to re-publish anything for a period of one year (to cover their print distribution), although you're allowed to put a copy on your home page. After that, you're free to do what you like. They also make all their stuff available online at no charge after a year. This is why I preferentially submit papers to Usenix rather than ACM or IEEE, I want to get the information out there where it does some good, not have it locked up in a copyright prison for all eternity. I can't imagine that the ACM is going to make much (if anything) from the reprint rights of a ten-year-old article on distributed search algorithms, but by locking it up, very few people ever have access to it. (Hmm, I wonder if it can be argued that making stuff intended for public distribution inaccessible violates the creator's moral rights? I know that doesn't apply in the US, but in other countries it might work. Moral rights can't be assigned, so no publisher can take that away from you. Any lawyers out there?).
It's far more typical, though, for the journal to get all rights, except perhaps classroom use (aka "fair use") by the author.
That's more traditional for publishers like IEEE and ACM. OTOH they seem to turn a blind eye to people making papers available on their home pages, even if the publishing agreement says you shouldn't do that. I suspect the backlash would be too strong if they tried to clamp down on this, although I wish it'd be formalised in some way rather than leaving it as a grey area. Peter.