Licence and copyright agreement

The following licence and copyright agreement is valid for any article published by Copernicus Publications in the journal Social Geography and its discussion forum Social Geography Discussions whose original manuscript was received from 10 December 2007 on. The licence and copyright agreement for articles based on manuscripts received before 10 December 2007 can be found here.

Author's certification 

By submitting the manuscript, the authors certify the following:

  • They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
  • The work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or proceedings-type publication – including discussion papers – or as part of a published lecture or thesis); it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere;  and its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work was carried out.
  • They have secured the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
  • They agree to the following licence and copyright agreement:

Copyright 

  • The copyright of any article is retained by the author(s). More information on the transfer of copyright can be found below.
  • Authors grant Copernicus Publications a licence to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
  • Authors grant Copernicus Publications commercial rights to produce hardcopy volumes of the journal for purchase by libraries and individuals.
  • Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely under the stipulation that the original authors are given credit and the appropriate citation details are mentioned.
  • The article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0  License. Unless otherwise stated, associated published material is distributed under the same licence.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Anyone is free

  • Share to share — to copy, distribute, and transmit the work
  • Remix to remix — to adapt the work

under the following conditions:

  • Attribution Attribution — The original authors must be given credit.
  • For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the licence terms of this work are.
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission.
  • Nothing in this licence impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

The full legal code of this licence.

Copyright transfers 

Many authors have strict regulations in their employment contract regarding their publications. A transfer of copyright to the institution or company is common as well as the reservation of specific usage rights. In open-access publications in combination with the Creative Commons License, a transfer of the copyright to the institution is possible as it belongs to the author anyway.

Any usage rights are regulated through the Creative Commons License. As Copernicus Publications uses the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, anyone (the author, his/her institution/company, the publisher, as well as the public) is free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work as long as the original author is given credit (see above). Therefore, specific usage rights cannot be reserved by the author or his/her institution/company, and the publisher cannot include the statement "all rights reserved" in any published paper.

A copyright transfer from the author to his/her institution/company can be expressed in a special "copyright statement" at the end of the publication. Authors are asked to include the following sentence: "The author's copyright for this publication has been transferred to institution/company".

Crown copyright 

The licence and copyright agreement of Copernicus Publications respects the Crown copyright. For articles written by authors affiliated with the British Government and its institutions, a copyright statement will be included as indicated in the manuscript preparation guidelines. Authors are asked to use the following statement, which has been approved by the Information Policy department of The National Archives:

The works published in this journal are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This licence does not affect the Crown copyright work, which is re-usable under the Open Government Licence (OGL). The Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License and the OGL are interoperable and do not conflict with, reduce or limit each other.

© Crown copyright YEAR

Reproduction request 

All articles published by Copernicus Publications are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (see details above) together with an author copyright. Therefore, there is no need from the publisher's side to give permission for the reproduction of articles. We suggest contacting the author to inform him/her about the further usage of the material. However, as the author decided to publish the scientific results under the CC-BY licence, he/she consented to share the work under the condition that the original authors be given credit.