How the RSC Obtains Rights to Publish

In order to publish material the RSC must acquire the legal rights that it needs to do so from the authors of that material. In general, we must obtain from the original author(s) the right to publish the material in all formats, in all media (including specifically print and electronic), with the right to sublicense those rights.

For papers in journals the RSC takes an exclusive Licence to Publish and the copyright owner retains copyright and certain other rights. For short items in journals (reviews, news items, etc) the RSC takes a non-exclusive licence in the form of a brief Terms and Conditions for Acceptance document (obtainable from the relevant Journals office). For most books the RSC takes assignment of copyright of the material. Each book, and each chapter if applicable, is subject to a standard Books agreement, obtainable from the Books Department.

In addition to obtaining the rights that we need from the author regarding his/her own material, we must also ensure that the material we publish does not infringe the copyright of others. We require the author to obtain all permissions that might be needed from third parties to include material that belongs to someone else (for example, a figure or diagram). A standard Permission Request Form for non-RSC material is available.