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IOP Science

Author Rights FAQs

I am about to submit, or have already submitted, an article to an IOP journal. May I post the Author’s Original/Preprint of the gold open access article online?

Our preprint policy applies to both subscription and gold open access articles. Under this policy, authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article anywhere at any time, as long as copyright in the Preprint is not transferred, and as long as an exclusive licence is not granted to a third party. For more information, please see our preprint policy.

My article has been accepted for publication in an IOP journal. May I submit the Author's Original/Preprint to a repository, scientific social network or website?

Our preprint policy applies to both subscription and gold open access articles. Under this policy, authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article anywhere at any time, as long as copyright in the Preprint is not transferred, and as long as an exclusive licence is not granted to a third party. For more information, please see our preprint policy.

May I submit the Accepted Manuscript or the Final Published Version of a gold open access article published under a CC BY licence to arXiv.org or another repository?

Yes, both the Accepted Manuscript and the Final Published Version of articles published under a CC BY licence can be shared elsewhere online. This includes submitting either article version to arXiv.org, or another repository. When sharing an article that is subject to a CC BY licence, you must make sure you include attribution to the authors, the journal citation and notice of the CC BY licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY licence on the Creative Commons website. When sharing the Accepted Manuscript version, the following wording should also be included:

‘This is the Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in [NAME OF JOURNAL].  IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it.  This Accepted Manuscript is published under a CC BY licence. The Version of Record is available online at [insert DOI].’

May I submit the Accepted Manuscript or the Final Published Version of a subscription article to arXiv.org or another repository?

The Final Published Version / Version of Record of a subscription article cannot be shared online in any circumstances (including to a personal website, or any non-commercial repositories). The Named Authors can, however, deposit the Accepted Manuscript version of a subscription article on a non-commercial institutional or subject based repository, including arXiv.org, after the expiry of the 12 month post publication embargo period. When depositing the Accepted Manuscript, the Named Authors must ensure that any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified, the Accepted Manuscript is only made available under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, and the following wording is included: ‘This is the Accepted Manuscript version of an article accepted for publication in [NAME OF JOURNAL]. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at [insert DOI].’

I have published an article in an IOP journal. May I reuse figures, tables, or text extracts, in future published works?

Yes. If you published your article on a subscription basis within an IOP owned journal, our Author Rights Policy grants you back the right to reuse, without permission, your figures, tables, and text extracts of up to 400 words, in future published works. This also applies to the Partner owned journals we publish that share our Author Rights Policy, and also to some that have their own policy. For more information on the author rights policy applicable to each journal, please see our Quick Check Guide.

When reusing content in this way, you must display adequate citation information and IOP’s and/or our Partner’s copyright notice. This information is necessary in order to show where any reuse requests should be directed and to avoid any suggestion of self-plagiarism.

If you published your article on a Gold Open Access basis under a CC BY licence, you—in common with all third parties—may deal with the article in any way you wish (such as reusing figures, tables, and text extracts, in new works), so long as you include attribution to the authors, the journal citation and notice of the CC BY licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY licence on the Creative Commons website.

How can I tell what licence my gold open access article is published under?

The Accepted Manuscripts and Final Published Versions of articles published under the gold open access model by IOP are currently, unless stated otherwise, published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY). The Accepted Manuscripts and Final Published Versions of articles published under the gold open access model by IOP prior to 2013 are, unless stated otherwise, published under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. Please check the first page of the article itself to clarify under which licence it was published.

The article was published under the gold open access model under a CC BY licence. Are there any restrictions as to where I can deposit the Accepted Manuscript or the Final Published Version?

For articles published under a CC BY licence, authors—in common with all third parties—may deal with the gold open access article in any way you wish (such as posting it to your institutional repository, another repository or website, or sharing it with others), so long as you include attribution to the authors, the journal citation and notice of the CC BY licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY licence on the Creative Commons website.

The article was published under the gold open access model under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. Are there any restrictions as to where I can deposit the Accepted Manuscript or the Final Published Version?

For articles published under a CC BY-NC-SA licence, you—in common with all third parties—may reuse the article for non-commercial purposes only and may post the article to non-commercial repositories and non-commercial websites so long as you include attribution to the authors and the journal citation, indicate if changes were made and distribute the article under the same CC BY-NC-SA licence. For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC BY-NC-SA licence on the Creative Commons website.

The article was published under the gold open access model under a CC BY-NC-ND licence. Are there any restrictions as to where I can deposit the Accepted Manuscript or the Final Published Version?

For articles published under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, you—in common with all third parties—may reuse the article for non-commercial purposes only and may post the article to non-commercial repositories and non-commercial websites so long as you include attribution to the authors and the journal citation, and so long as no modifications or adaptions were made to the article. If you wish to modify, adapt, or otherwise transform the article, you may not distribute the modified version.  For full licence terms and attribution requirements, please refer to the CC-BY-NC-NC licence on the Creative Commons website.

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