Skip to content

This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to our use of cookies. To find out more, see our Privacy and Cookies policy.

IOP Science

Author Rights Policy (subscription articles)

This is the current author rights policy for articles published on a subscription basis. This policy applies to authors who have submitted a copyright form for a subscription article on or after 26 April 2016. Please refer to our previous author rights policy for copyright forms submitted before 26 April 2016.

For gold open access articles, please refer to open access rights and licence information. 

Version dated: 21 April 2021

Author Rights Policy for subscription articles for which the copyright form was submitted on or after 26 April 2016.

1        IOP and/or its licensors grant the Named Authors the rights specified in paragraphs 2 and 4 which must be exercised solely for non-commercial purposes. IOP and/or its licensors also grant the Named Authors the right contained in paragraph 5, which is the right to reuse their original figures in subsequent publications. Where possible, any use in accordance with the rights specified in paragraphs 2, 4 and 5 must display citation information and IOP’s and/or its licensor’s copyright notice, and, for electronic use, best efforts must be made to include a link to the online abstract in the journal.

Exercise of the rights in this paragraph 2 may use the peer reviewed, edited, formatted and typeset version of the Article including any tagging, indexing and other enhancements published by IOP and/or its licensors (the “Final Published Version”).

2        The rights are to:

  • make copies of the Final Published Version (all or part) for teaching purposes;
  • include the Final Published Version (all or part) in a research thesis or dissertation provided it is not then shared or deposited online. Where a Named Author wishes to share their thesis or dissertation online, they should remove the Final Published Version before uploading the thesis or dissertation. The Named Authors may include a Preprint or Accepted Manuscript (after the embargo period) in the online version of the thesis or dissertation, provided that they do so in accordance with our policies on sharing Preprints or Accepted Manuscripts as described below; and
  • make oral presentation of the Final Published Version (all or part) and include a summary and/or highlights of it in papers distributed at such presentations or in conference proceedings.

The Named Authors retain all proprietary rights in the Article other than copyright.

3        Exercise of the rights referred to in paragraph 4 must not use the Final Published Version and extend only to the version of the Article accepted for publication including all changes made as a result of the peer review process, and which may also include the addition to the article by IOP of a header, an article ID, a cover sheet and/or an ‘Accepted Manuscript’ watermark, but excluding any other editing, typesetting or other changes made by IOP and/or its licensors (the “Accepted Manuscript”) and must be accompanied by the following statement of provenance:

‘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].’

4        Additional rights of the Named Authors are to:

  • Use the Accepted Manuscript (all or part) without modification in personal compilations of the Named Authors’ own works (provided not created by a third party publisher); and
  • Include the Accepted Manuscript (all or part) on the Named Authors’ own Personal Website(s), institutional website(s), non-commercial repositories, Scientific Social Networks and third party websites provided that this is fully in accordance with the Author Rights set out at the following URL legal.ioppublishing.org/author-rights on the date of submission of the agreement.

5        In addition to the rights granted in paragraphs 2 and 4 above, IOP and/or its licensors also grant the Named Authors the right to reuse, without further permission, their original figures, tables, and text extracts of no more than 400 words, in future published works of which they are an author. When reusing content in this way, the Named Authors must display adequate citation information and IOP’s and/or its licensor’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.

Author rights: Preprint/Author's Original

Authors are permitted to share the Author’s Original/Preprint of their article anywhere at any time. Please refer to our Preprint Policy for further information.

Author rights: Accepted Manuscript

After acceptance, each Named Author of an article to be published/published on a subscription basis may:

Unless otherwise stated, any reference below to an Embargo Period is a reference to a period of 12 months from the Date of Publication.

1. Post the Accepted Manuscript at any time on their Personal Website, provided that any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified. It may not be posted under any form of open access or Creative Commons Licence during the Embargo Period. After the Embargo Period, a CC BY-NC-ND licence applies to the Accepted Manuscript, in which case it may then only be posted under that CC BY-NC-ND licence provided that all the terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

2. Post the Accepted Manuscript on their employer’s or institution’s website after the Embargo Period under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, provided that all the terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

3. Post the Accepted Manuscript to an institutional repository or subject repository (in both cases ONLY where non-commercial) after the Embargo Period under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, provided that all terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified. The above should satisfy the requirements of research funders for ‘green open access’, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, US National Institutes of Health, NASA, NSF, US Department of Energy, NIST, National Research Council of Canada and Austrian Science Fund, to deposit the outputs of research funded by them in a repository.

4. Post the Accepted Manuscript to an institutional repository or a subject repository (in both cases ONLY where non-commercial) where necessary to comply with the requirements of the HEFCE REF 2021 open access policy. HEFCE’s requirements are as follows:

  • For articles with a Date of Acceptance between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2018 inclusive, the Named Authors may make a Closed Deposit of the Accepted Manuscript to the non-commercial repository within three months of the Date of Publication of the article; or
  • For articles with a Date of Acceptance on or after 1 April 2018, the Named Authors may make a Closed Deposit of the Accepted Manuscript to the non-commercial repository within three months of the Date of Acceptance of the article.

In both the above cases, after the Embargo Period, the full text of the Accepted Manuscript may be made available on the non-commercial repository for anyone with an internet connection to read and download. After the Embargo Period a CC BY-NC-ND licence applies to the Accepted Manuscript, in which case it may then only be posted under that CC BY-NC-ND licence provided that all the terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

5. Post the Accepted Manuscript to a non-commercial Scientific Social Network after the Embargo Period under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, provided that all terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

6. NOT post the Accepted Manuscript to any commercial Scientific Social Network, commercial repository or any other publisher website. For example, ResearchGate, Mendeley* and Academia.edu are commercial Scientific Social Networks and so the Accepted Manuscript of the article may not be posted to them or shared on them.

7. *Post the Accepted Manuscript, in their private library on Mendeley (their private document file space which is not accessible by third parties), provided that any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

8. Post the Accepted Manuscript to arXiv after the Embargo Period under a CC BY-NC-ND licence, provided that all terms of the licence are adhered to, and any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified.

9. However, a limited number of IOP journals allow the Named Authors to post the Accepted Manuscript to arXiv at any time (please note that this does not apply to bioRxiv) provided that any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified. You must select the ‘non-exclusive licence to distribute‘ and not an open access or Creative Commons Licence offered by arXiv when uploading the article (You may indicate that the CC BY-NC-ND licence applies after the Embargo Period by including the following wording on the Accepted Manuscript, ‘This Accepted Manuscript is available for reuse under a CC BY-NC-ND licence after the 12 month embargo period provided that all the terms and conditions of the licence are adhered to’ (unless there is a cover sheet applied to it by IOP which already states this).  The journals this currently applies to are:

  • Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
  • Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
  • Classical and Quantum Gravity
  • Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
  • Journal of Instrumentation
  • Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment
  • European Journal of Physics
  • Quantum Science and Technology

10. Post the Accepted Manuscript to bioRxiv after the Embargo Period, provided that any copyright notice and any cover sheet applied by IOP is not deleted or modified, provided you select the CC BY-NC-ND licence offered by bioRxiv under their ‘distribution/reuse options’ when uploading the article and provided all the terms of the licence are adhered to.

You may indicate that the CC BY-NC-ND licence applies after the Embargo Period by including the following wording on the Accepted Manuscript, “This Accepted Manuscript is available for reuse under a CC BY-NC-ND licence after the 12 month embargo period provided that all the terms of the licence are adhered to” (unless there is a cover sheet applied to it by IOP which already states this).

Once the Final Published Version has been published on IOPscience, in all cases where the Accepted Manuscript has been posted, the Named Authors must add citation details and a link from your posting of the Accepted Manuscript to the Version of Record via DOI.  IOP requires that the Named Authors include the Statement of Provenance as set out in the ‘Definitions’ section below.

The Named Authors may not post the Accepted Manuscript in any repositories, Scientific Social Networks or websites that automatically apply an open access licence to the article granting reuse rights under the terms of the repository, Scientific Social Network or website (unless it applies a CC BY-NC-ND licence, in which case it may only be posted under that licence after the Embargo Period).

For clarity, IOP only currently applies the CC BY-NC-ND licence to the Accepted Manuscripts of articles published in the Journals which apply to this policy (and this only applies after the Embargo Period).

Final Published Version and Version of Record

The Named Authors are granted certain limited rights to use the Final Published Version as expressly set out in the signed Copyright Form for the article. No use should be made of the Final Published Version except for those rights expressly granted to the Named Authors.

The Named Authors may NOT post, share or deposit the Final Published Version or Version of Record of articles published under the subscription model online in any circumstances (this includes not posting it on their Personal Websites, not posting it to sites such as ResearchGate, Mendeley and Academia.edu, and not posting it to any other websites or repositories).

Third parties/subscribers cannot make the Final Published Version publicly available, or deposit it anywhere, post it online or share it with anyone who is not a subscriber to the particular Journal.

The Final Published Version and the Version of Record of articles published under the subscription model are fully protected by copyright and must only be published online by IOP or its licensors.

Author rights: abstracts

Each Named Author of an article published on a subscription basis may post the abstract at any time after publication of the Final Published Version, on any repository, Scientific Social Network or third party website (in all cases ONLY where non-commercial) but not on the websites of other publishers, provided in all cases that the Named Author includes a link via DOI to the abstract page of the Final Published Version on IOPscience. No changes may be made to the abstract. Any links, brands, trademarks or copyright notices embedded in the abstract must remain intact.

Definitions: article versions

It is important to understand which version of an article you are reading and what rights you have when you access our content. Is it the un-edited manuscript, the peer-reviewed manuscript, the final version or one that has been corrected post-publication? The following are our current definitions of the different versions of an article and apply to both subscription and gold open access articles.

Author’s Original/Preprint is ‘the version of the article before peer review or editing, as submitted by an author to the journal’.

Accepted Manuscript is ‘the version of the article accepted for publication including all changes made as a result of the peer review process, and which may also include the addition to the article by IOP of a header, an article ID, a cover sheet and/or an ‘Accepted Manuscript’ watermark, but excluding any other editing, typesetting or other changes made by IOP and/or its licensors’.

Final Published Version is ‘the peer reviewed, edited, formatted and typeset version of the article, including any tagging, indexing and other enhancements published by IOP and/or its licensors’.

Version of Record is ‘the Final Published Version, including any post publication corrections or enhancements and any other changes made by IOP and/or its licensors’.

Definitions: other definitions

Closed Deposit

means ‘only the abstract of the article is discoverable to anyone with an internet connection on a non-commercial institutional or non-commercial subject repository, and the full text is not available to read or download during the Embargo Period’

Creative Commons Licence

is one of several public open access licences that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work, subject to adhering to certain terms as specified in the licence: https://creativecommons.org.

Date of Acceptance

is ‘the date that the author is notified by the Journal that (i) their manuscript has been reviewed by the Journal or conference (normally via peer review), (ii) all academically necessary changes have been made in response to that review, (iii) the article is ready to be passed to production for copy editing and typesetting and (iv) the article has been accepted’.

Date of Publication

is ‘the date of first online publication on IOPscience of the Final Published Version by the Journal, as that date is specified on the article’.

Embargo Period

is ‘a period of 12 months from the Date of Publication’.

Named Author

is ‘each of the authors named as an author on the article’ and Named Authors shall be construed accordingly.

Personal Website

is a ‘website and/or blog relating to the author and their work, the content of which is controlled by them and (i) may be on their personal page on their institution or department’s website or (ii) may be hosted by them at a separate IP address or mobile site altogether, which could be linked directly to their institution’s or department’s website. It does not include their institution’s subject or department pages, an institutional or subject repository or a page on a Scientific Social Network or any form of commercial site’.

Scientific Social Network(s)

is an ‘online scientific community platform for scientific communication and interactivity which generally includes, but is not limited to, users having the ability to chat and make comments on forums, post their profiles, deposit documents in repository facilities, share information and research, find collaborators, work on shared documents together and manage collaborative projects within groups’.

Statement of Provenance

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]

IOP reserves the right to issue take-down notices to anyone or any site which infringes this policy or to take other action as it considers to be appropriate.

In the case of any discrepancy between the definitions contained on this page and those on the Copyright Form, the definitions on the Copyright Form will prevail.

Author rights: journals

This policy applies to all articles submitted to and published by the following journals:

  • 2D Materials
  • Applied Physics Express*
  • Biofabrication
  • Bioinspiration and Biomimetics
  • Biomedical Materials
  • Biomedical Physics and Engineering Express
  • Classical and Quantum Gravity
  • Convergent Science Physical Oncology
  • Electronic Structure
  • European Journal of Physics
  • Engineering Research Express 
  • Flexible and Printed Electronics
  • Fluid Dynamics Research
  • Functional Composites and Structures
  • Inverse Problems
  • Japanese Journal of Applied Physics*
  • Journal of Breath Research
  • Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering
  • Journal of Neural Engineering
  • Journal of Optics
  • Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical
  • Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
  • Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
  • Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter
  • Journal of Radiological Protection
  • Laser Physics
  • Laser Physics Letters
  • Materials Research Express, volumes 1-6
  • Measurement Science and Technology
  • Methods and Applications in Fluorescence
  • Metrologia
  • Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering
  • Multifunctional Materials
  • Nanotechnology
  • Nano Futures
  • Nonlinearity
  • Physica Scripta
  • Physical Biology
  • Physics Education
  • Physics in Medicine and Biology
  • Physiological Measurement
  • Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
  • Plasma Research Express
  • Plasma Sources Science and Technology
  • Progress in Biomedical Engineering
  • Progress in Energy
  • Quantum Science and Technology
  • Reports on Progress in Physics
  • Semiconductor Science and Technology
  • Smart Materials and Structures
  • Superconductor Science and Technology
  • Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties
  • Translational Materials Research

(each a ‘Journal’ and together the ‘Journals’).

*For these titles, this policy applies only to articles published after a certain date. Please see the Japan Society of Applied Physics page for full information.

For further information, please refer to IOP’s FAQs.

See here for CHORUS requirements, or please refer to IOP’s open access page.

Back to top