Book contract, permissions, rights and license

Open access books are assigned a Creative Commons (CC) licence which is a public copyright licence that enables the free distribution of otherwise copyrighted work. In other words, it describes how others can share, reuse and build upon your research.

When discussing the terms of your publishing agreement with a publisher, it is important to be aware of open access requirements from your institution or research funder, and to pay close attention to the terms specific to making the work open access, such as copyright retention and the particular open licence.

When your book is published open access, what readers can do with your published work depends on the licence.

Rights retention aims to provide a route for making the accepted version of a manuscript open access without incurring cost. Unlike journals, there is little precedent for books or chapters being made open access via this route. A small but growing number of research organisations, particularly in the United Kingdom, have policies that include rights retention support for authors of books and book chapters.

Third-party material may be included in open access books. Authors must secure permission from the rights holder and should state clearly in each caption what licensing terms apply to the material, as these may differ from the open access licence under which the rest of the book is released.