Publishing Your Research: Authorship

All journals and publishers provide instructions for authors (also known as author guidelines, submission guidelines, resources for authors, formatting guide for authors, etc.).

These instructions provide information on basic requirements for submission, manuscript formatting, and policies. 

Read author instructions carefully. Avoid delays, frustration, and rejection by checking and double-checking:

• journal purpose
• journal scope
• accepted article types
• word count
• formatting structure
• permissions
• citation style
• copyright transfer information

Author instructions for over 6,000 journals in one place provided by the Mulford Health Sciences Library

Authors possess copyright from the moment it their original work is written, printed, saved, etc. These exclusive rights include: reproduction, adaptation, distribution, and public performance or display.

Publishers ask authors to transfer some or all of these rights in legal contracts during the publication process.

Read publication agreements or copyright transfer agreements in the author guidelines or open access policies with great care.

Yes!

Negotiate to retain rights such as the ability to: 

• Publish the work in a repository or other location required by funding 
• Share the work with colleagues
• Distribute the work in the course of teaching
• Develop subsequent works based on the work/data
• Receive notice of reuse

1. The SPARC Author Addendum provides a template for authors to use to retain certain rights when signing a publication agreement.
2. Choose a journal with flexible policies. Search for a journal in Sherpa Romeo to locate information on the journal's copyright and open access policies. 

* * Please note that MWU Librarians do not provide legal advice and information provided is for informational purposes only. * *

ORCID is a digital identifying number used by researchers to establish their official author name.

Each ORCID is unique and ensures research discoverability regardless of:

• name changes,
• other authors with a similar name, or
• misspellings

ORCID are required for some NIH grants. 

Other author identifier options include: ResearcherID,Scopus Author Identifier, etc.