Every journal should have an open, available author agreement so authors will know before submission if they are willing to agree to the journals requirements for authors.
Common criteria for an open access journal's author agreement:
- Publisher keeps a “non-exclusive right to publish”
- Author keeps copyright with permission to post the peer-reviewed manuscript to a personal website or repository.
- Author must get permission to use any copyrighted content in their manuscript; this takes the liability away from the publisher if the author didn’t do their due diligence.
