The Publishing Research Consortium is a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion.

Our objective is to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship. Overall, we aim to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching.

New Summary Paper published - Journal Authors' Rights: perception and reality

The PRC's fifth Summary Paper compares the findings of a specially commissioned study on what authors want to do with their journal articles, and what they believe they are permitted to do by their publisher agreements, with re-analysed data from a recent ALPSP study on publishers' policies. 

Authors underestimate what their publisher agreements allow them to do with pre-publication versions, and their rights to re-use the published version in their own publications, in course packs, or to send to colleagues;  however, they significantly overestimate their right to self-archive the PDF of the final published version.  Publishers need to make sure their authors understand their agreements;  the term 'preprint' may also be leading to confusion.

(March 2009)