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As ONE illustration of how rights are generally shared between author and publisher, even with a copyright transfer agreement, let us look at the Author's Rights page of Elsevier, a publisher requiring copyright transfer. Clearly, even with copyright transfer to the publisher, Elsevier is recognizing a broad range of rights that remain with the author. For example, as archivangelists have been pointing out for years, Elsevier authors retain full rights to deposit preprints and author's post-peer-reviewed manuscripts for open access in institutional repositories; so that there is nothing between an Elsevier author and an OA copy in the IR, except for a few keystrokes. Elsevier here explicitly states permission for sharing with research colleagues, as long as this is not for commercial purposes; it is not necessary to state this, but it is helpful. Please note that this is not meant as an endorsement of Elsevier's Author's Rights; this is traditional copyright transfer, which is not necessary. Even many traditional publishers (such as Nature) have much more author-centric agreements. I would recommend that authors publishing with Elsevier use an Author's Addendum, to ensure full rights retention; for example, Elsevier permission for self-archiving is limited to IRs and personal / departmental websites, which is not helpful to authors preferring to deposit in disciplinary repositories such as E-LIS. Excerpt from Elsevier Authors' Page: What rights do I retain as a journal author*? As a journal author, you retain rights for large number of author uses, including use by your employing institute or company. These rights are retained and permitted without the need to obtain specific permission from Elsevier. These include: * the right to make copies (print or electric) of the journal article for their own personal use, including for their own classroom teaching use; * the right to make copies and distribute copies (including via e-mail) of the journal article to research colleagues, for personal use by such colleagues (but not for Commercial Purposes**, as listed below); * the right to post a pre-print version of the journal article on Internet web sites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers or sites (see also our information on electronic preprints for a more detailed discussion on these points); * the right to post a revised personal version of the text of the final journal article (to reflect changes made in the peer review process) on the author's personal or institutional web site or server, incorporating the complete citation and with a link to the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the article; * the right to present the journal article at a meeting or conference and to distribute copies of such paper or article to the delegates attending the meeting; * for the author?s employer, if the journal article is a ?work for hire?, made within the scope of the author?s employment, the right to use all or part of the information in (any version of) the journal article for other intra-company use (e.g. training), including by posting the article on secure, internal corporate intranets; * patent and trademark rights and rights to any process or procedure described in the journal article; * the right to include the journal article, in full or in part, in a thesis or dissertation; * the right to use the journal article or any part thereof in a printed compilation of works of the author, such as collected writings or lecture notes (subsequent to publication of the article in the journal); and * the right to prepare other derivative works, to extend the journal article into book-length form, or to otherwise re-use portions or excerpts in other works, with full acknowledgement of its original publication in the journal. *Please Note: The rights listed above apply to journal authors only From: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/copyright#whatrights Added comment: in addition to the above, please note that the Elsevier copyright transfer agreement has long made exceptions for authors of "works-for-hire", such as federal government employees, who cannot transfer copyright. In other words, even with a very conservative approach to traditional copyright, some articles are actually published with no transfer of copyright at all. Any opinion expessed in this e-mail is that of the author alone, and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library. Heather Morrison, MLIS The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com