When you publish in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal, you keep the copyright of the manuscript. On this page you can learn more about our Licence to Publish and the rights you retain as an author. We also explain where you can deposit and share your article, and how to request permission to re-use other people’s work.
The following details apply only to authors accepting the standard Licence to Publish. Authors who are interested in publishing open access should visit our open access pages for more information about our open access licences and deposition rights.
On this page
About our licence to publish
Rights retained by authors
Deposition & sharing rights
Re-use permission requests
Assurances
In the licence to publish, the author provides the assurances that we need to publish the material, including assurances that the work is original to the author, that the work has not been published already and that permissions have been obtained if previously published material has been included.
If the manuscript includes material that belongs to someone else (for example, a figure or diagram), we require the author to obtain all permissions that may be needed from third parties. If you wish to reuse material that was not published originally by the Royal Society of Chemistry please see Re-use permission requests.
Download the Royal Society of Chemistry licence to publish
Rights retained by authors
When the author accepts the exclusive licence to publish for a journal article, he/she retains certain rights that may be exercised without reference to the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Reproduce/republish portions of the article (including the abstract).
Photocopy the article and distribute such photocopies and distribute copies of the PDF of the article for personal or professional use only (the Royal Society of Chemistry makes this PDF available to the corresponding author of the article upon publication. Any such copies should not be offered for sale. Persons who receive or access the PDF mentioned above must be notified that this may not be made available further or distributed.).
Adapt the article and reproduce adaptations of the article for any purpose other than the commercial exploitation of a work similar to the original.
Reproduce, perform, transmit and otherwise communicate the article to the public in spoken presentations (including those that are accompanied by visual material such as slides, overheads and computer projections).
The author(s) must submit a written request to the Royal Society of Chemistry for any use other than those specified above.
All cases of republication/reproduction must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of first publication of the work by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the wording of which depends on the journal in which the article was published originally. The acknowledgement should also include a hyperlink to the article on the Royal Society of Chemistry website.
The author also has some rights concerning the deposition of the whole article.
Deposition and sharing rights
The following details apply only to authors accepting the standard licence to publish. Authors who have accepted one of the open access licences to publish, or are thinking of doing so, should refer to the details for open access deposition rights.
When the author accepts the licence to publish for a journal article, he/she retains certain rights concerning the deposition of the whole article. This table summarises how you may distribute the accepted manuscript and version of record of your article.
Sharing rights | Accepted manuscript | Version of record |
Share with individuals on request, for personal use | ✓ | ✓ |
Use for teaching or training materials | ✓ | ✓ |
Use in submissions of grant applications, or academic requirements such as theses or dissertations* | ✓ | ✓ |
Share with a closed group of research collaborators, for example via an intranet or privately via a scholarly communication network | ✓ | ✓ |
Share publicly via a scholarly communication network that has signed up to STM sharing principles | ⌛ | ✕ |
Share publicly via a personal website, institutional repository or other not-for-profit repository | ⌛ | ✕ |
Share publicly via a scholarly communication network that has not signed up to STM sharing principles | ✕ | ✕ |
If you are a reader looking for the terms of use for information published by the Royal Society of Chemistry under our standard licence to publish please refer our terms of use.
CHORUS
We are members of the CHORUS initiative, and therefore make the Accepted manuscript version of articles describing research funded by participating funders publicly available on our web site after an embargo period of 12 months. This is effective for research published from 1st March 2018 onwards. Unless otherwise noted on the article the Accepted manuscript is licensed under the terms of our standard license to publish and is subject to our standard reuse terms.
Using third party material in Royal Society of Chemistry publications
We must ensure that the material we publish does not infringe the copyright of others. We require the author(s) to obtain, at the earliest opportunity, the relevant permissions that might be needed from third parties to include material that belongs to someone else.
Please contact the publisher/copyright owner of the third party material to check how they wish to receive permission requests. Please plan to submit your request well ahead of publication of your material.
The most common procedures for permission requests are outlined below.
- A number of publishers have opted out of receiving express permissions as long as they fall under the rules of the STM Permission Guidelines.
- If they do not fall into the category above, the majority of publishers now use RightsLink from the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to process their requests.
- Other publishers have their own permission request forms and/or specify what information they need to process any permission request.
- If the publisher/copyright owner does not have a specific procedure please complete and submit the ‘permission request form for non-RSC material’ form. Send the form to the permission administrator or editor of the relevant publication.
- If the copyright owner has opted to publish under a Creative Commons licence, licensees are required to obtain permission to do any of the things with a work that the law reserves exclusively to a licensor and that the licence does not expressly allow. Licensees must credit the licensor, keep copyright notices intact on all copies of the work, and link to the license from copies of the work.
In all cases the following rights need to be obtained.
Permission is required to include the specified material in the work described and in all subsequent editions of the work to be published by the Royal Society of Chemistry for distribution throughout the world, in all media including electronic and microfilm and to use the material in conjunction with computer-based electronic and information retrieval systems, to grant permissions for photocopying, reproductions and reprints, to translate the material and to publish the translation, and to authorise document delivery and abstracting and indexing services.
Please note that the Royal Society of Chemistry is also a signatory to the STM Permission Guidelines.
Reproducing material from other Royal Society of Chemistry publications
If you are reproducing material from a Royal Society of Chemistry book, education or science policy publication or a Royal Society of Chemistry website you must complete and submit the online permission request form (or the PDF version of the permission request form for Royal Society of Chemistry material).
Requests are usually for use of a figure or diagram, but they may also be for use of the entire article or chapter. Requests to use individual figures or diagrams are invariably granted. Permission for another publisher to print an entire Royal Society of Chemistry article or chapter may be granted in special circumstances.
The permission form should only be used to request permission to reproduce material from Royal Society of Chemistry books, Chemistry World, Education in Chemistry, and other non-journal publications of the Royal Society of Chemistry. For these requests please complete and send the form to our publishing services team.
- Email:
- Send us an email
Customer Services team
- Tel:
- +44 (0) 1223 432176
- Email:
- Send us an email
Share
Advertisement