- Copyright on any open access article in a journal published by SpringerOpen is retained by the author(s).
- Authors grant SpringerOpen a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
- Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
- The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing articles.
In addition to SpringerOpen’s copyright policy, some journals also follow an Open Data policy and the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver applies to all published data in these journals. Further information can be found on the individual journals pages and in the license agreement.
Where an author is prevented from being the copyright holder (for instance in the case of US government employees or those of Commonwealth governments), minor variations may be required. In such cases the copyright line and license statement in individual articles will be adjusted, for example to state ‘© 2016 Crown copyright’. Authors requiring a variation of this type should inform SpringerOpen during or immediately after submission of their article. Changes to the copyright line cannot be made after publication of an article.
Exceptions to copyright policy
There may be exceptions concerning copyright and licensing for articles which were previously published under policies that are different from the above. For instance, occasionally SpringerOpen may co‐publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply. In all such cases, however, access to these articles is free from fees or any other access restrictions.
Information specifically regarding permissions and reprints can be found here. Please contact us if there are questions.