Republishing any work without permission can infringe copyright. This includes translations, which are legally considered derivative works.
If you plan to republish any work – such as a journal article, poem, short story, or other content – you must first obtain permission from the copyright holder:
- If the work was originally published in a non-open-access source, you will need to obtain permission for your specific use by contacting the copyright holder.
- If you are republishing work that was previously published open access, its Creative Commons (CC) license may already grant permission for republication and adaptation. Note that CC licenses with a “NoDerivatives” restriction do not allow adaptation. Learn more about the different CC license terms.
When seeking permission to republish the work in your journal, that permission must include the right to distribute the republished version under your journal’s CC license.
Legal Considerations
- Without a sufficiently broad CC license, republication rights belong solely to the copyright holder.
- Many publishers require that authors grant a transfer of copyright or an exclusive license, but not all. For instance, authors do not transfer copyright to eScholarship journals, but instead grant a nonexclusive license. Always ask the publisher or author that you contact to state clearly that they have the rights to authorize your journal’s use.
- Your journal’s republished work, whether translated or in its original language, will carry your journal’s standard CC license. Journal settings do not generally accommodate excluding a single work from a journal's standard CC license. If a copyright holder will not agree to your CC license, please contact eScholarship. We may be able to provide technical support for an exception, but will need to discuss the implications with you.
Permissions
To ensure proper permissions for translations and republications, follow these steps:
- Identify the copyright holder.
- Request written permission to republish the work.
- Clearly state in your request that the republished work will be published under your journal’s CC license, and include information about the specific license your journal uses.
- Keep a record of all correspondence and agreements.