How is ResearchGate dealing with copyright issues when posting our papers?

Dear Bashar,

I'm a member of ResearchGate since just a few days. I updated my publication list and noticed that the platform allows for uploading corresponding PDFs. Also, I realized that I can browse through publications of others and, when made available from the authors, I can download a copy of a paper.

This lead me to ask myself your same question:

How copyright issues are handled by Researchgate?

One possible conclusion I came up with is the following:

Given that Researchgate is community of users, publisher's copyright does not apply.

It can be seen as sharing a paper with a friend, which is quite different than publishing it freely on the web. However, this is just one way to see things and I am not sure that it really holds. (After all it let think a bit of Napster's line of defense when it was sued because of copyright infringement).

In conclusion, I would like to make sure to not infringe copyright before starting uploading my papers (by the way, some of them have been already uploaded by some co-authors of mine).

I would be very glad if this platform would allow for freely uploading and downloading papers, but what is the real situation? Have you been able to find an answer to your question? If so, would you be so nice to share it?

Until now i do not have really a good answer. So far it seems that the authors themselves are the responsible for verifying copyright before uploading the papers. BUT it is a bit annoying that in some cases I have noticed that it is extremely difficult to withdraw an uploaded paper form researchgate. Once the system catch the paper (uploaded intentionally or unintentionally form you or any of the co-authors) it is so far very hard (if at all possible) to withdraw the fulltext!

I have to say that some more control mechanisms have to be provided to the users to manage their papers and fulltext! otherwise a lot of users will run into problems. At the end, as you have mentioned if you are careful other co-authors be not!

I am guessing that it is your responsibility to check the copyright of what is uploaded, as you are doing the uploading not ResearchGate who are just providing the framework and tools. Most publishers would allow you to upload a version of your paper under Green Open Access rules see [ http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ ]. I think it is always good advice to be clear of your copyright position before you up load the full text. You can always contact the publisher to ask if you are unsure. While I wouldn't worry too much about a pre-print or post print you would need to be very clear before you upload a .pdf version of a published paper with publisher logo's, typesetting and other formatting. The other solution is to publish in an Open Access journal. This is easy to say and my be harder to do!

The link provided by Katrina is indeed very helpful. As an ex-manager of a university's institutional repository, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being careful to only upload to any repository (which includes ResearchGate) only those full-text versions for which you have permission. That is to say, you know what you have agreed with the original publisher. Unfortunately in the case of RG, that is really only made explicit if you select the option to add supplementary materials. I put this to the test recently when queried by my university's Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, as to the same concern raised by Bashar.

Let me ask you in another way, if you have some reprints of your articles alone or as a coauthor, and certain researchers asked to have a reprint, what that means?, distribute the article with a permission or no. Photo-copying your article and distributed to some colleagues, does it need permission?. I think as far as this helps the community of reserach in your area without any money wise can be reagrded as a positive ???????.

Here are some nice articles and thoughts about the copyright issues

This is a very nice one from Matt Blaze:

This one from David Rosenthal:

It is certainly a good idea that we, as authors, start growing an interest in copyright matters. In this regard, the readings suggested in previous answers are relevant. But I think it’s worth setting here the record straight about a few misconceptions.

1. Copyright in journal articles doesn’t “expire” after a few years; in fact, it expires, and the article falls into the public domain, between 50 and 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. What Arjun had in mind is rather embargo periods: among the many journals allowing authors to self-archive their article (most often the revised manuscript, not the PDF formatted by the journal), some require that it be done a certain time after publication (generally 6-12 months). But in any event, the author can’t then put a Creative Commons licence on the article because of the copyright agreement with the publisher the author signed upon acceptance.

2. Sending a single copy of one's article to a colleague who asks for it, by email for instance, is generally legal, not because we are a "community of users", but because it falls under the fair use / fair dealing (or similar) exceptions in national copyright laws. But uploading it on a server from where anybody could download it freely requires the authorization of the publisher. Fortunately, many journals allow it (sometimes after an embargo period, as discussed above). However, some publishers make subtle (and often fuzzy) distinctions between various types of servers, for instance limiting the authorization to institutional repositories, or personal web sites. As a result, in specific cases it may be difficult to know for sure if uploading a paper in one’s RG profile is permitted or not. But in such a case, one should do it anyway, and if a publisher ever sends a take-down notice, claim that it was done in good faith, and prove it by removing the article at once.

ResearchGate leaves it up to the authors to check the copyright, though their wording when uploading is a little vague. As a rule of thumb unless you publish in PLoS, BMC or you or your funder/institution has paid an open access fee you cannot upload the publisher pdf to ResearchGate, often you may be able to upload the author manuscript (after peer review) which you can check on SherpaRomeo. However they often stipulate not to a commercial organisation and RG is a commercial organisation. RG appears to be taking the stance that youtube had years ago, where everyone uploaded copyrighted content where as not it tries to identify it. But Mendeley did the same and eventually they were bought by Elsevier. It is the community of people who come here which is the financial incentive. If that is encouraged by uploading copyright material then so be it but if enough people start coming here and registering then eventually RG will be bought by someone similar to Elsevier.

Adapted from: http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/author-rights-and-responsibilities

Can I post my published journal article on open websites?

A published journal article is the definitive final record of published research that appears in the journal and embodies all value-adding publisher activities, including copy editing, formatting and, if relevant, pagination, along with the stewardship of the scholarly record.

You can use your branded and formatted published article for all of the personal and institutional purposes described above. However, in order to safeguard the correct scientific record, Elsevier does not permit the posting of published journal articles (either the pdf provided by Elsevier or HTML files) on any open websites.

As part of its contribution to the stewardship of the scientific literature, Elsevier works with third parties (e.g. national libraries) to preserve its journal articles for posterity and in perpetuity, and invests to drive their usage. Elsevier strictly enforces an absolute guideline on the location of its published journal articles: each branded and formatted published journal article will reside only on a completely controlled site because this is the only way that we as the publisher can guarantee that each published journal article is permanent, authentic and unaltered as part of the 'minutes of science'.

Since Elsevier adds significant value to the final published journal article, we need to take these steps to ensure that this value is maintained, both for Elsevier and for our authors. However, we view preprints and accepted author manuscripts as less formal versions of the article and we therefore take a more liberal approach towards these, as described in more detail on our Article Posting Policies information page.

The IEEE Publication Services & Products Board has approved revisions to IEEE's author posting policy ... The revised policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post the accepted version of their article on their personal Web sites or those of their employers. (Authors of IEEE open access articles may freely post the final version of their papers.) The policy provides that IEEE will make available to each author a pre-print version of that person's article that includes the Digital Object Identifier, IEEE’s copyright notice, and a notice showing the article has been accepted for publication. The policy also states that authors are allowed to post versions of their articles on approved third-party servers that are operated by not-for-profit organizations.

Dissemination

Publication is only a part of the broader goal of disseminating ideas and results. Authors can expect ACM to contribute to this wider goal, and in particular to encourage dissemination in multiple forums. ACM expects authors to acknowledge ACM's contribution and not to publish the same material in other venues, except as permitted by ACM Author Rights and Publishing Policy.

Thus authors can expect ACM to

* Allow a submission to be posted on home pages and public repositories before and after review

* Allow an authors' version of their own ACM-copyrighted or licensed work on their personal server or on servers belonging to their employers

...

As long as ResearchGate has no advertising it might be perceived as being my personal server / public repository. Once it advertises more than one relevant research job to me, I define it as commercial and I am out of here.

As mentioned by Reza "Elsevier does not permit the posting of published journal articles (either the pdf provided by Elsevier or HTML files) on any open websites". But I have noticed that even many leading scientists/authors have posted the copyrighted version of articles published by Elsevier on public domain.

I have a related question.

ResearchGate allows to verify the number of downloads for each articles.

Usually the author can share 50 copies of his article with other colleagues without dealing with copyright issues.

What do you think about posting the pdf of article until the number of maximum downloads is reached and finally deleting the file, in order to not deal with the copyright issues?

Good, Maria but this is another way to answer but still you need permission to distribute and publish an article. Does it make difference if you have a free access online articles to that not.

@Maria. In practice I don't see much difference between (1) Sending 50 copies to other researchers who, normally, would have asked it by sending you an email (2) Letting 50 researchers (what ResearchGate users most certainly are) visiting your profile download the paper. The result being the same, it seems to me that (2) doesn't violate the copyright agreement. It's still possible though than from a legal perspective, those two situations are completely different. But not being lawyers, the best we can do is use common sense (and good faith), which describes well what you suggest.

Hi Maria, I think you will find this advice elsewhere, but you need to check this website to see what your publisher allows in the way of self archiving [ http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ ]. Marc and Maria, you may not see the difference between distributing 50 copies and posting the the .pdf on ResearchGate but there is. 1) Different copyrights exist in the type face, layout etc. 2) If you have signed over your rights to the publisher then they will normally only allow posting a pre or post print 3) Putting a .pdf of the published paper online is in effect republishing it which is normally specifically excluded by the publisher. My advice is never publish a .pdf of the published version unless you have or have asked permission. Open Access is of course different. BW Matt

@Matt. I assumed that Maria was referring to those publishers which allow the author, as part of the copyright agreement, to send 50 copies of the article (the PDF, not the pre- or postprint) to colleagues. Also implied in my answer was that from a strictly legal point of view, it's possible that what Maria suggested could be considered as a form a distribution, but the fact that this distribution would be limited to the number of copies that the author is allowed to send could change the picture. One must also consider the exact wording of the agreement. For instance, in this one (http://www.cfp.ca/site/Authors/CopyrightAgreement_2012.pdf), authors are allowed to "distribute on a non-commercial basis up to 50 copies of the article", which is exactly what Maria had in mind. So I maintain my advice, but of course you have the right to suggest we should be more cautious.

@Matt Couture I think that publishers take a very different view to an academic sending out copies of their paper via email and posting the paper on an open website. Elsevier see this as 'systematic distribution'

"Authors retain the right to use the accepted author manuscript for personal use, internal institutional use and for permitted scholarly posting provided that these are not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution"

"Systematic distribution means: policies or other mechanisms designed to aggregate and openly disseminate, or to substitute for journal-provided services"

@Andrew. As I said (1) One has to check what states precisely the publisher's policy and (2) One can judge, in good faith, if a specifid act violates the terms, or the spirit, of the policy. This is a matter of interpretation, which could eventually be settled by the courts; for the time being, it's up to everyone to make the decision (and take the risk).

As I said in other answers related to this subject, unlessI think it will obviously violate the agreement I signed, I go ahead. But should I receive a take-down notice from a publisher stating that they consider it a violation of the agreementI, would readily (if not gadly) remove the paper, as I don't have the means to go to the courts to validate - or invalidate - my interpretation.

@Marc Couture I agree Marc and to be honest I think it is very low risk, since I doubt any of the big publishers will ask you to remove an article from RG, if they wanted to do this they would ask RG themselves and while RG continues to grow and academics continue to add value by engaging with RG the big publishers will leave them alone until maybe they decide to buy them out as Elsevier did with Mendeley http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/elsevier-mendeley-journals-science-software.html

Hi Marc, I agree with you. The point I would make is that in general, need to read the specifics of the agreement you sign, it will be against copyright. In practice the risk as you say is small, but you should make an informed choice. BW Matt

I am curious if the regulations are more lenient on the final manuscript versions rather than the final published PDFs?

@Abdullah. It depends of what you mean by "regulations". If you mean copyright law, there is no difference between posting the final manuscript or the PDF : only the rights holder can post one or the other on the Web, or authorize someone (even the author, if he or she has transferred the rights to a publisher) to do so.

If you refer to the permissions publishers give authors, I would say that among the 60%+ of publishers allowing self-archiving, most (but I haven't done a systematic survey) allow it for the final manuscript only, so archiving the PDF would be a breach of the publication agreement. Note however that some publishers allow only archiving of the PDF. The site SHERPA/RoMEO (http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo) gives the relevant information for over 1300 publishers (22 000 journals).

Thank you Marc Couture for sharing such a good site.

Sherpa Romeo is an extremely helpful site for both authors and those of us who are involved with repository management. However, in the current volatile environment of academic publishing, publishers are continually tweaking and changing their permissions policies, and Romeo may not always have the latest information for the journals you are considering for submission. Unfortunately, not all publishers' websites make it easy to find or to interpret their copyright policies.

If you are at the point of choosing which journal/s to submit to, ask your institution's research office and/or library for their assistance with this aspect of your selection - it could save you time and give you the widest possible options for sharing your research with others.

I read here (or on related questions) that some of us consider ResearchGate similar to a personal or department webpage, in which case the publishers' PDF could (for some journals) be uploaded. Haven't contacted several publishers, I have so far not encountered a single publisher who considers ResearchGate as a personal webpage, see eg the response from AIP "AIP considers ResearchGate to be a social networking site and, as such, our policy is to allow only the author's own version of the manuscript to be posted, as is the case for e-print servers such as arXiv." This might be of help for those who were pondering about this like me.

@Ramis Örlü thank you very much for a clear information about RG.

For one, Elsevier does *not* allow to post the PDFs of journal versions of the articles published with them (i.e. the PDFs with journal formatting etc.):

How can i remove my previously uploaded paper in RG?! There is no option to nether remove nor change the uploaded file!

There are two things you can do.

(1) Ask ResearchGate to remove the file (I don't know exactly how to do it though; probably through the Contact page).

(2) Nothing. It seems to me that you uploaded the file in good faith, as you didn't clearly understand the meaning of the permissions you had. But from now on you should stop uploading PDFs unless you verify (through SHERPA/ROMEO or by checking the copyright agreement) that you have the right to do so. As to your previously uploaded PDF(s), the publisher may do what Elsevier did on last December: it sent take-down notices to (among others) Academia.edu regarding PDFs which, in the words of Elsevier's spokesperson "may have been inadvertently posted" (see http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/posting-your-latest-article-you-might-have-to-take-it-down/48865). Academia.edu, not the authors, had to remove the infringing PDFs.

My advice : choose (2). I have to add that Elsevier has not been making many friends in the scientific community in the last few years, for instance when it actively lobbied against Green OA mandates in the US. Its last move (it sent take-down notices even to some universities) didn't help. There is even an ongoing boycott of Elsevier that has gathered close to 15 000 names (see http://thecostofknowledge.com).

Returning to the original question about “if there are any copyright issues when we post our published papers on ResearchGate?”, taking Elsevier as an example of the publishing companies, the following points could be helpful (available also here: http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/article-posting-policy#pre-print):

There are three stages in a journal article’s development that are relevant from a policy perspective: preprint, accepted author manuscript (AAM) and published journal article (PJA). The definition and policy for each is described below.

*Pre-print Definition: A preprint is an author’s own write-up of research results and analysis that has not been peer-reviewed, nor had any other value added to it by a publisher (such as formatting, copy editing, technical enhancement etc...).

*Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM) Definition: An accepted author manuscript (AAM) is the author’s version of the manuscript of an article that has been accepted for publication and which may include any author-incorporated changes suggested through the processes of submission processing, peer review, and editor-author communications. AAMs do not include other publisher value-added contributions such as copy-editing, formatting, technical enhancements and (if relevant) pagination.

*Published Journal Articles (PJAs) Definition: A published journal article (PJA) is the definitive final record of published research that appears or will appear in the journal and embodies all value-adding publisher activities including copy-editing, formatting and (if relevant) pagination.

Elsevier's Policy is different for each of the three aforementioned categories.

For a Pre-print, Elsevier's Policy says that: An author may use the preprint for personal use, internal institutional use and for permitted scholarly posting.

For Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM), Elsevier's Policy says that: Authors retain the right to use the accepted author manuscript for personal use, internal institutional use and for permitted scholarly posting provided that these are not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution.

For Published Journal Articles (PJAs), Elsevier's Policy says that: An author may use the PJA for personal use and internal institutional use (see below for definitions of these terms). In the interest of safeguarding the correct scientific record, however, Elsevier does not permit the posting of PJAs (Elsevier-provided PDF or HTML files) on any open websites. This is to ensure that the final published version of an article, which has been edited and peer-reviewed according to the publishing standards of an Elsevier journal, is always recognized as such only via the journal itself, whether in print or electronic format. PJAs may not be used for commercial use or for systematic distribution (see above for definitions of these terms).

The explanations of these three using/sharing categories (personal use, internal institutional use and permitted scholarly posting) based on Elsevier’s policy are:

*Personal use: Use by an author in the author’s classroom teaching (including distribution of copies, paper or electronic), distribution of copies to research colleagues for their personal use, use in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works, inclusion in a thesis or dissertation, preparation of other derivative works such as extending the article to book-length form, or otherwise using or re-using portions or excerpts in other works (with full acknowledgment of the original publication of the article).

*Internal institutional use: Use by the author’s institution for classroom teaching at the institution (including distribution of copies,paper or electronic, and use in course packs and courseware programs). For employed authors, the use by their employing company for internal training purposes.

*Permitted scholarly posting: Voluntary posting by an author on open websites operated by the author or the author’s institution for scholarly purposes, as determined by the author, or (in connection with preprints) on preprint servers.

Accordingly, I think what is firstly quite clear, is that Elsevier does not like to see any of its Published Journal Articles (PJAs) in an open website, obviously, including ResearchGate.

About the Pre-prints and Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM), however, it warily and cautiously gives the permit for permitted scholarly posting and it can be seen that based on Elsevier’s definition, a permitted scholarly posting is exemplified by open websites operated by the author or the author’s institution for scholarly purposes and is strictly characterized to be used not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution.

Then, it is clear that ResearchGate is not run by the author or the author’s institution!

So, what can make us go on with sharing articles on RG, is just the “Naive belief” that RG is not making any money (commercial use) out of scientists’ papers. Of course, it does not sell them, but who can believe that RG is running just for the sake of god or science? With all the respect to people like “Ijad Madisch” who put their effort on making science distribution easier and cheaper, we should accept that surviving in the market costs and definitely, RG (that is legitimately a for-profit enterprise as far as I now), like any other company, has its own way to do it (https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_ResearchGate_business_model).

By this paragraph above, I would like however to say that it seems that at least for Pre-prints and Accepted Author Manuscript (AAM), there is not a very direct and clear warning from the Elsevier’s policy and authors can choose to understand it in a way that permits them to share their work in RG and if later they encountered a notice from the publisher, they could explain to have it done “inadvertently” just because of the lack of clarity in the publisher’s policy for the definition of permitted scholarly posting.

Then, apart from all these stuff, this struggle (between publishing companies and sharing sites such Academia.edu or RG) is just a combat of the market giants and what matters less for them is actually the intellectual property and the strives behind each single article.

Good luck with your decision!

In my opinion the easiest way for someone to get a full text, with no need for the author to make it public, is just privately contacting the author to ask him if he could kindly provide the desired full text.

Marco's suggestion is certainly the fall-back solution which many people use. With today's technology advancements, there is another --automated-- solution. As an author, you can upload a copy of the full-text in your institutional repository (IR), even if it cannot legally be made publicly accessible because of licensing restrictions.

However your IR has a <Request a copy> link which opens a window in which the interested reader provides their details. If approved, the full-text is emailed to the requester. To see an example, go to the following record at Queensland University of Technology: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/31338/

ResearchGate does not deal with copyright issues, it ignores them.

I presume that for all publishers, there must be relevant information on whether the 'publishers' provide copyright and/or posting permissions to the authors/users on their websites. We researchers are mostly not dig up these features or read the whole permissions list when we sign 'terms and conditions above'. Individually as a researcher, I would enjoy to showcase my works and having discussions upon, as it not only helps exchanging insight, but also making research-based connections. On the other hand, there are other reasons why a publisher might not want to share the valued work unless requesting a full access to the publisher's database, e.g. becoming a member.

I checked with the IEEE for the matter, for my own publications. Notice that when you search for a publication in ieeeXplore, there are some buttons on the left hand side, one of which is 'Request Permission'. Now if you go ahead and click on that, the first impression you will see that they are extremely sensitive regarding third party publishing (no matter the author publishes on his behalf, RG is a third party after all).

As you request to showcase your work as such, which is named under the option "I would like to post on an internet/blog", they ask more questions and provide further options. Note that none of the options include "full-text publication", the closest you get is "up to 75% of the full article". In the end, you'll see the resultant answer as "IEEE does not permit an entire article to be posted on the internet."

On the other hand, I see some of my colleagues already publish their work in RG as taken from the publisher database (with all labels, etc.). I would say that although IEEE claims to be very sensitive about the matter, having the authors using third-party for showcasing is an ethical dilemma for them (and for us) after all.

In this case, in my opinion and for the time being (unless there would be an extreme interest) I would choose not to attach the full-text to RG, as there is a neat option attached next to it: "Request full-text". Why not contact directly with the authors and ask for their work? Personally, I would be happy to share them and make new contacts along the way.

Happy researching!

 EXAMPLE IS THE AGRONOMY JOURNAL. It is stated to not copy the full texts but only links to the abstracts.

I noticed that if you search in Google "the name of a journal research gate" you could access to a page in Research gate with a desciption of the Journal including a link to the journal website policy page (as done by sherpa romeo).

As an example : https://www.researchgate.net/journal/0021-8979_Journal_of_Applied_Physics

But I don't know how to search such a page directly in research gate...

A link to the journal website can be given. Individuals can access to the article through their library.

This is a very interesting and important topic to be discussed, since some researchers normally upload their articles without check if this can be done with no further consequence.

One of the posters on this thread mentioned that even leading researchers upload their papers (unfortunately I can't link to it now, some problem with differences between logged-in and logged-out view of the thread). Please be careful about drawing this conclusion: as far as I can see, ResearchGate does not distinguish between papers you upload yourself, and those you simply identify, and that your co-authors upload. Fortunately, this probably also provides some defence to a copyright suit: I think the copyright owner coming after you is going to have to prove that _you_ took the action that breached copyright (i.e. uploading the paper); proving that the paper is there and linked (automatically) to your name isn't going to be enough (usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice).

On a related matter, suppose I upload a preprint before submitting it to a journal, it's eventually accepted and I assign copyright to the publisher. I've never seen a copyright  assignment that directly asked me to undo preceding actions (has anyone?). So what would be the situation (even for those publishers that do block the posting of preprints)? As I understand it, copyright assignment itself only affects future actions (as distinct from any other things you might agree to do/not do in the agreement that assigns the copyright). So uploading a revised version would breach the copyright. But leaving the unrevised copy there? Would I be liable for inducing others to breach copyright (by copying a version that is now subject to copyright, in circumstances where they probably can't tell that they are doing so)? Could a copyright assignment compel me to take an action, namely to remove the now-copyright version - if I could find a way to do so - as distinct from forbidding me to take an action?

1- Click the title of any article you have; 2- scroll down the the page until you see "Show self-archiving restrictions"; 3- Click this link.  Then you see information about the journal's restrictions. This is the way how ResearchGate deals with copyright issues .

I wonder how this applies to papers authored or coauthored by US Federal Government Employees?

@ Robert I. Mckay You raise relevant legal questions. Like you, I'm not a lawyer, but I read a lot (and wrote a book with a fellow lawyer) on these matters. I think it would be difficult to hold that a preprint and the published version, which is often not much different from the former, can be treated as two different works subject to independent agreements. So unless you granted a license for the preprint (or applied a CC license to it) before assigning copyright to a publisher, I would think that the preprint is subject to the same copyright agreement. And yes, the new copyright owner is the one who can decide if and where it can be posted.

Now, if you did grant a license or apply a CC license to your manuscript (or preprint), the publisher must simply deal with it when it accepts your article. This is the basis of Harvard-style open-acess policies: by default, authors grant a non-exclusive license to the university for the final, revised manuscript (postprint) before entering into a copyright agreement with a publisher.

But from a practical perspective, those journals (a small minority) which don't allow preprint self-archiving most probably won't take action, even if they had a legal standpoint. This is mainly because scientific publishers rely entirely upon the collaboration and goodwill of researchers giving away their works and doing peer review for free. They know that strong legal actions in this matter would infuriate many (if not all) researchers, and put to risk the fragile equilibrium between researchers and publishers.

As an illustration, when Elsevier sent in 2013 take-down notices to researchers and repository managers (but no actual suing that we heard of), for posting publisher’s versions, which are not allowed, they were careful to state they believed these PDFs had "often inadvertently" been posted (see http://svpow.com/2013/12/17/elsevier-steps-up-its-war-on-access).

There are those few journals (American Chemical Society journals being notorious examples: http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/prior/index.html) applying the so-called "Ingelfinger Rule", meaning that they won't (or may not) consider for publication previously "published" content, and that count as previous publication posting of a preprint. But this is part of these journals publishing policies, and has nothing to do with copyright.

So I will be quite confident to post my preprint, irrespective of the journal policy. But, personally, I would base my choice of journal in which to publish partly upon the self-archiving rights. There are plenty of top-tier journals allowing self archiving of postprints, not to mention open-access journals.

Hi Marc; thanks for your comment, but I'm not sure one part is correct. You say 'So unless you granted a license for the preprint (or applied a CC license to it) before assigning copyright to a publisher, I would think that the preprint is subject to the same copyright agreement.' But a copyright assignment of itself cannot grant more rights than copyright itself does. And copyright ownership does not, in my understanding, cover the existence of copies, but the act of making new copies. For example, when one book publisher sells their copyright to another, the new owner doesn't get the right to recall copies that have already been sold. So if the preprint exists on a server before the copyright assignment is undertaken, are you sure that its continued existence after the license would be a breach of the copyright? Of course the implied permission to copy arising from being on a preprint server is a problem, but would the new copyright owner have any rights beyond getting an injunction that the preprint be marked as not available for copying? (I think the precedent of libraries might be pretty strong here - you can read a book in a library, you just can't make a copy; if the original author manuscript copy was sitting on a shelf marked 'not subject to copyright', the copyright assignee would have the right to insist that it was moved to a different shelf, but not to restrict reading of the manuscript, still less to require its destruction or to insist on photocopiers being removed from the library).

@Robert

We are delving here into the intricacies of copyright, especially Internet-related ones. So this warning: the following is for the legally-inclined.

Copying is just one of several uses falling under copyright law, meaning that they can be performed or authorized only by the copyright owner. Another is "communicating a work to the public by telecommunication" (Canadian copyright law) or "displaying a work publicly" (US copyright law), which includes making a work available online.

So the copyright owner can force the author to stop "displaying the work publicly" or "communicating the work to the public", that is to remove the work from the Web. I don't see how displaying a warning "not available for copying" would make any difference, as this use doesn't imply that a copy is made by those to whom it is displayed or communicated.

However, to keep the analogy with the library, people who had downloaded it before can surely keep their copy (legally made under fair use / fair dealing or similar exceptions). But they can't distribute printed copies on a large scale or put a copy online; in fact, they couldn't even before it was withdrawn from the web, unless the author had explicitly allowed it, for instance with a CC license. By the way, this is one of the advantages of CC licenses: they are perpetual, thus unaffected by any further copyright agreement. A preprint with a CC-license could thus be available forever.

Dear Colleagues,

For a matter as important  as this and one that involves Researchgate directly, I am finding their silence rather conspicuous. I have just published a paper with a warning to the effect of: 

"All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of TransTech Publications, www.ttp.net. (ID: 146.182.9.9-30/03/15,08:35:29)"

Needless to say, the undertones of the notice imply serious repercussions for the contravention of this notice. Will the REAL Researchgate please speak up?

Dear R. O. Ocaya, if this is what the publisher's conditions say, then you can't upload on ResearchGate. Seems simple. 

Lisa Amir, Researchgate is a "new-kid on the block" and rather leaves the important decision to the author, along with it's ramifications. I know when and when not to. Can we safely say the same for the millions and counting Researchgate users? A resounding NO! It would seem then that a clear-cut policy is needed, not assumed.

Often I receive notice from ResearchGate stating something like  "We have found full text of one of your publications". Can that article be uploaded? Will that violate the copyright issue?

You should refer to Sherpa/romeo archive policy statements and color codes

I have uploaded some articles by misunderstanding "Romeo green" is allowed to uploaded the post print pdf file. What should I do to remove it? I have tried to remove it from my publication list but in facts it only remove it from the list but not the articles from researchgate.

Yuen, I have just looked at one of my publications in ResearchGate, to which I have uploaded a [legal] copy. If I click on the text icon on the left-hand side of my screen, it then displays it as well on the right-hand side. And there is an "x" which would allow me to "delete" this item. Is this what you are seeking to do?

 Where can I find an answer if I could publish a book that I wrote in 2006 in the site?

@Noga: Contrary to journal articles, where the answer can often be found in SHERPA/RoMEO, there is no simple answer to your question.

As the author, you could be the one who can make all decisions about publishing, sharing, modifying, uploading (on RG or elsewhere), but only if you are the owner of the copyright. This might well be the case, because authors are normally the first and sole owners of the copyright on their works. But NOT if any of the following three apply:

1. You included in your book content that you didn't write or create; in practice, that means including anything more than small excerpts (for instance, short quotes) of other works.

2. You wrote the book as part of your job duties (unless your employer explicitly renounced to its copyright ownership).

3. You entered into an agreement  with a publisher, in which you granted them exclusive rights to publish the book (by way of copyright transfer or an exclusive licence).

In the first two cases, you must obtain the permission from the copyrights owners (the publishers of the included content, or your employer, respectively).

In the third case, you must read carefully the contract you signed and try to determine (it's not always easy) if you kept the right to use the content of the book for other purposes, or if the agreement is of a limited duration. This is rarely the case for books, especially with commercial publishers. In any event, you may ask the permission to the publisher, who may or may not grant it, for a fee or not.

The fact that the book was written 10 years ago doesn't change the legal status regarding copyright, but publishers could be more inclined to give permissions for older books, as they may conclude that there is then not much to loose.

I must say also say that #2 above is country-dependent. It certainly applies to British-inspired copyright laws (Canada, US, Australia, and UK of course), as well as to some other (Japan and Israel to name a few).

Thanks so much for all the information!

Thank you for the information !

I notice that we have a lot of researchers sharing knowledge about copy-right law and  guessing here ! Could we please get a point of view from a representative of researchgate.net please !!  That is: if any of you are listening in !

@John. RG representatives do (or did) from time to time participate in copyright-related discussions. For instance, Dennis Jlussi, RG General Counsel, answering another question, gave the following interpretation, which is of interest here: "We do see ResearchGate profiles as personal websites".

This is important because some publishers allow self-archiving more readily on personal websites than on other venues. While I can think of some counter-arguments, and one never knows in such cases which way a court of law would lean if the matter was brought before it, this interpretation is plausible. Thus, one can in all good faith act according to it. Where a publisher to dispute this interpretation by sending take-down notices, the sound thing to do would be to simply remove the files, again in all good faith.

All Dennis Jlussi's answers may be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dennis_Jlussi/answers. The cited excerpt is near the end.

Why each of us has to contact the publisher rather than Research Gate contacting once each publisher and then preparing a list with the permission policy of each publisher for the benefit of the many authors. 

I think researchgate has already initiated that. Recently I got an email saying that my journal allows self archiving so I should upload the fulltext for better visibility of my publication. 

Aika, the question is - Is putting your paper on ResearchGate self-archiving? I don't think so. I only put my open access papers on ResearchGate.

Hey Lisa, I understood the question.. My ans was to Riess's raised question that researchgate should prepare the list of journals those have self archiving in the policy. Which I think researchgate has already initiated based on the recent email I have received.  

@Hui Yao,

I'm not sure I understand your answer. Elsevier conditions are clearly stated on their website (https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-information/policies/copyright): they require the transfer of copyright or an exclusive licence. In both cases, the author can distribute his or her article only according to the permissions received from Elsevier.

The following is what I understand of Elsevier's incredibly convoluted use conditions (and I spent much time reading and re-reading all copyright-related pages):

Unless there is an agreement between Elsevier and the repository (that's probably what they mean by "dealing with this issue", but there is no mention of such an agreement in their website), the only things Elsevier currently allows authors to post on RG is:

But if the person from Elsevier told you something different, you can surely follow his or her advice. But make sure you understand well what you were told.

depends on the publisher rules, but in general I will send a paper if requested, but not post full text on RG. Most people have access through institutions anyway, but if one doesn't, its easier to send a full text to that individual.

In my experience of working with Open Access, I would be careful to check the policy for each journal as these vary a lot between journals and their publishers (not all publishers have the same policy for all journals that they print). Generally publisher PDF's are not allowed to be kept and the embargo usually applied to the Post-print version of the article.

I would probably follow the advice as given for subject repositories, although this isn't exactly one of those, I would say that its set up is closest to that given that what you post can be accessed freely and that  there are not many restrictions to joining the site.

Although uploading the paper in open network like RG is against the copyright issue of publishers, I support the statement made by Dr. Alexandra Elbakyan (the founder of Sci-Hub) that 

1. “Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal. Also the idea that knowledge can be a private property of some commercial company sounds absolutely weird to me.”

2.“All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold,” (in particular this statement)

Re Elsevier and posting the version of record - VoR - (aka publishers versions) on RG, we have been here before in the infamous case between Elsevier & Academic.edu a couple of years ago. See: http://bit.ly/1bVRVEL. I'd strongly recommend researchers review what they can and can't do with pre-prints, post-prints & a publisher's versions (the VoR) by taking a look at publisher's copyright and self-archiving policies on Sherpa Romeo: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo. Here's a reminder of the Academic.edu story from The Scholarly Kitchen: "Dec 2013: Elsevier has issued a sweeping series of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take down notices regarding Elsevier-published content to Academia.edu, a file-sharing network for researchers and other academics." More at: http://bit.ly/1bVRVEL

Interesting that this question of copyright viz ResearchGate continually surfaces. When RG first started, I advised my university that I was very concerned about the lack of any "in your face" warning about ensuring copyright / license compliance for any uploaded document. I have to admit that RG has progressed considerably since then.

Now when I am about to upload a file, the "conditions" make clear what my obligations are. In some cases there is a nice note to tell me what the publisher's policy is as per SHERPA/ RoMEO [but I always double check ;-]. Even if it says "green", I usually err on the side of caution and upload a simple Word version of the text.

Ultimately it is our responsibility to "do the right thing", regardless of the platform being used to make our research accessible to the wider community.

I think someone should check the copyright issue first before uploading their work on research gate. 

For article sharing guidelines of elsevier journals please see this link:

I have asked one of the publishers after recieving a proposal from RG to self-archive one of my publications. This publication appears in the web page of the publishers as "currently unavailable", so I asked them if I could upload a full-text version of this publication in my ResearchGate profile. The answer from the publishers was this:

They insist on post-production chapters but did not mention anything about pre-print versions.

Here's my take: there are a lot of researchers out there. We work in a system that is acknowledged from all sides to be broken:

- I write papers

- My colleagues review them

- I have to pay large amounts of money for open access publications, and even in closed access journals I have to pay a large amount for color figures

- The publishers sell the work back to my University for a lot of money. In fact, just a few days ago I published a paper and had to ask on Facebook for people to send me the full text because I don't have access to the journal (!).

Here is my recommendation: always upload all your final papers on your website and researchgate. Make sure to note somewhere that this is not for mass dissemination but just for students and colleagues. The worst that could happen is that a publisher actually writes you an email and asks you to take a publication down ... so be it. But they will not do that because they are happy that the papers are read and cited (we know that open access papers generate more publications, given that everything else is equal). 

Let's fight for the right to get our things online. It's silly that many of us are funded by tax payers, but tax payers can't actually read the final work because they have no access to University libraries and so forth.

If we all put everything online, it will change the system over time. Elsevier will not write 150.000 researchers and ask them to remove papers from their websites... 

There have been quite a few comments in response to this question, so I apologize if I repeat what someone has already said.  Many journals allow for you to place your papers on an archive such as ResearchGate after a certain "embargo" period.  I believe someone posted earlier a link to Elsevier's policy.  It is to your advantage to learn about these policies to allow for the widest dissemination of your material.  Note that many journals allow you to self-archive at any time to internal institutional archives and to your own "invitation only" archives, 

There may be copyright issues when author post published papers on ResearchGate.

The best way to make sure that author is not in breach of any copy right issues is to check against a SHEPRA/RoMEO database.

Please follow  the link and enter ISSN of your Journal to find out what author is allowed to do in terms of publishing own work:

For books/book chapters please refer to the maintained list of Cambridge University: ( click on 2nd line "Maintained List")

ResearchGate should take the responsibility for notifying authors directly that they have negotiated with a given publisher the right for an author to upload a given published article to the RG site. I am a scientist and not a lawyer and do not have the time or inclination to parse the copyright limitations for each publisher. As much as I would like to oblige many of the scientists requesting full-copies of my articles; in the absence of such authorization it would seem imprudent for me to respond to any request for a copy of my articles. 

A couple of my articles which are now freely available from their respective journal's website are still not technically allowed to be posted on researchgate. This I don't understand, because although by downloading my paper means one less hit for the journal's website (and probably their own official download statistics) it will no doubt lead to more citations for the journal. It pisses me off that we scientists give our work away for free or pay a journal to take it and we then have no rights over it, even when that journal after, say, 1 year allows free access to the article on their own site.

Would be a good idea to proactively publish your articles open source in journals such as PLOS so you don't run into this problem.

Most publishers permit the sharing pre-print versions (aka the submitted version).  Permissions are often controlled at the journal level and you would refer to the author instructions of a specific journal for this information. Here is an example of permissions from Wiley: http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-826716.html.

Along this line of thought, this may be interesting to others: Open Access to science papers will be default by 2020 - link: https://blog.frontiersin.org/2016/05/31/open-access-to-science-papers-will-be-default-by-2020-say-european-ministers/

Thanks for this blog, Victoria. But at the moment, it's wishful thinking. We need to follow copyright laws, even if we don't like these regulations.

As was said above, many journals allow you to share your papers after an embargo period.  Others allow you to share YOUR un-typeset version of a paper.  Still others are open access and therefor you can share at any time.   

I think the question posed in this topic is not really the correct one.  I don't believe it is ResearchGate's place to do anything about it.  We, as a scientific community, need to do something about it.  I would share further thoughts but this is first day of classes for our Fall semester, so that will take precedence.

Regardless of how tempting and easy it is to upload copyrighted material to ResearchGate, it is illegal and unethical. That is what we sign up for when we publish in subscription based journals. ResearchGate should work out a system with journals where the authors can purchase if necessary and give out digital reprints to a limited number of people who request them keeping the material restricted otherwise.

@W. Ashley Hammac –– I disagree uploading your own paper is unethical. You know what is unethical? That I recently had to ask colleagues at another University to get me my own full text PDF paper through their library because my University does not have library access to that (high impact) Journal. I couldn't get my own paper I had worked on for 18 months.  

I agree very much with eiko. 

I think the following might be a solution to the general problem.  when I write a paper it goes thru many stages. then I send it to the journal and it will go thru their referring system that I find quite useful.  however the pre submission paper is not the one that will

be published and so I have no hesitation at uploading it to research gate as a "work in progress".  it is mine.  the accepted journal paper is the journals. research gate is unique in that it allows a discussion and presentation of our ideas to the community and I hope it continues!

kind regards

david

As much I subscribe to submissions of Eiko, I think suggestion given by Marian solves it all. If preprint version is made available with a link to the final paper, it will afford both Author of the manuscript and those in need of it to have access to it. Permit to also thank Eiko for bringing up this question as I have learn a lot from the various contributions.

I think some clarifying on the issues recently discussed could be helpful.

First, one has to realize that the preprint and the final version (postprint) share normally a very substantial identical content. One thus can't talk of two different works, with different copyright owners. The author has granted the publisher exclusive rights to the final version, which includes all that was retained from the preprint. Thus, the publisher's conditions or restrictions apply in practice also to the preprint. For instance, Elsevier (see Sharing and hosting policy FAQ, http://elsevier.com/about/company-information/policies/policy-faq) states that it doesn’t assert copyright over preprints, which means that it could impose conditions on preprints (like some other publishers do), but chose not to. According to SHERPA/Romeo (http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php), about 1/5 of the publishers forbid uploading both the preprint and the postprint, and 1/3 more, while authorizing the postprint, forbid the preprint.

Second, unless there were no, or really minimal revisions (which may happen, but as a reader of the preprint you don't know it), you want to read, and refer to, a version identical, or quasi-identical, to the published version. No one wants to quote an excerpt, or state a result, which doesn't exist anymore in the published version. Obviously, one could cite the preprint itself as an unrefereed, unpublished manuscript (a "work in progress", in David's words), but such a citation could be unacceptable in many journals. There are exceptions where journal papers do cite preprints, but to my knowledge they are found only in the fields where preprint deposit in ArXiv has been a longtime tradition (high-energy physics, astrophysics, etc.).

So, what we're really concerned with here is the final, revised manuscript whose content is the same (besides formatting and light copy-editing) than the published version (the "publisher's PDF", which may very rarely be legally uploaded).

Unfortunately, each publisher has its own set of conditions and restrictions, often difficult to really understand or appreciate. As we don't have the time nor the expertise to try and make sense of all these conditions, a pragmatic approach, albeit certainly a bold one, is to upload one's final manuscripts in all cases, letting the publishers interpret their own conditions and send take-down notices if required. Like Eiko says, “Elsevier will not write 150.000 researchers and ask them to remove papers from their websites”. As stated on Elsevier’s Sharing and hosting policy FAQ, they will rather contact repository (or platform) managers.