Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - UC3M

To publish is to disseminate via printing or any other procedure. It also is to make public, spread, put into circulation, etc.

In a strict sense, they are not synonyms. Printing is the way or the procedure to disseminate an intellectual work in accordance with its nature. Publishing is making that work available to the public. It is said that printing is for the work, publishing is for the reader.

By publishing we understand, among other things, all the work necessary to make a work available to the public.

Legal Deposit is the obligation to deposit copies of all types of publications, reproduced in any medium, by any procedure for public distribution, rental or sale, in one or several specified agencies. The printers or producers of publications are the ones obliged to make the Legal Deposit.

The ISBN -International Standard Book Number – is a number created to give each book a numerical code in order to standardize commercial identification. This number facilitates circulation in the publishing market and the management of authors’ rights. The publisher is the one who applies for the ISBN through the Spanish ISBN Agency.

Yes. The ISSN for serial publications, the NIPO for official publications and other codes for other types of publications (print music, audiovisuals, sound recordings, etc.)

Basically the authors’ rights involved are the proprietary rights to exploitation, specifically the right to reproduction and the right to distribution.

On the one hand, the Law of Reading, Books and Libraries (Law 10/2007, 22 June), applied to the publishing and commercialization of books in any kind of medium and to serial publications.

On the other hand, the Law of Intellectual Property (RDL 1/1996, 12 April), whose articles 58 to 73 regulate the publishing contracts.

Normally for a work to be commercially published, a contract is signed between the publishing company and the author.

Also, when articles included in scientific journals are published by commercial enterprises, the usual procedure is to sign a rights’ assignation document (copyright transfer). However, articles or other works published in journals belonging to non-commercial enterprises do not require any sort of assignment in writing. In this case reproduction and distribution of the work is understood to be authorized solely for this specific case.

A publishing contract regulates the author’s transfer of his/her reproduction and distribution rights for a work to the publisher in exchange for an economic consideration. It is a formal contract that must include the minimum content established by law.

That depends on whether or not the transfer of rights was exclusive and on the content of the agreement. On occasions, the transfer of the authors’ rights is so broad that the author can make no use whatsoever of his/her own work except with the publishing company’s prior authorization.

It is very important to negotiate with the publishing company before signing the contract (so that its content is adjusted to the needs of both parties), know the extent of the transfer and keep a copy of the contract.

This case is simply a specific application of the previous question, and therefore the answer is the same. It depends on what has been signed with the publisher.

In the university world, the trend towards creating Institutional Repositories to gather the Institution’s academic output is altering the tradition of complete and exclusive transfer. Currently the contracts between authors and publishers that are being promoted contemplate the possibility of giving free access of works online on personal and institutional websites once several months have passed following publication (which is known as the period of embargo).

Probably not. The transfer of authors’ rights must be clearly and expressly recorded and cannot go beyond what has been explicitly agreed on. Therefore, it is very unlikely that a publishing contract prior to the digital age would contain any transfer of rights outside the analogical sphere.

In these cases, the publishing company must negotiate a new rights transfer contract with the author.

In order to know a publishing house’s policy on intellectual property rights, the following sources may be consulted:

• the publishing company’s website
• Sherpa Romeo database
• Dulcinea database (Spanish publications)

There are different initiatives for this.

• The Copyright toolbox is a joint effort of the JISC and the SURF Foundation. It is defined as a set of tools to assist authors and publishers in reaching optimum access to the publication while respecting the publisher’s aim for economic profit.
• The Scholar’s copyright addendum engine (MIT, SPARC, Science Commons)

More information in e-Archivo and e-Ciencia.