What is a Copyright?
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.
Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use. A major limitation on copyright is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves. Some, but not all jurisdictions require "fixing" copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rightsholders.These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and "moral rights" such as attribution.
Like many other scientific publishers, the MWP requires authors or their employers to provide transfer of copyright prior to publication. This permits MWP to publish the article and to defend against improper use (or even theft) of the article. An exclusive licence helps us ensure adequate protection against infringement of copyright protected material through breach of copyright or piracy anywhere in the world.
The author retains the copyright until acceptance, and has the full freedom, for example, to withdraw the paper from consideration by an MWP journal and submit it elsewhere. The author(s), in consideration of the acceptance of the above work for publication, do(es) hereby assign and transfer to the MWP all of the rights, title, and interest in and to the copyright of the above titled work in its current form, including online supporting material (data supplements) submitted with the work, and in any form subsequently revised for publication and/or electronic dissemination, including translations to another language.
This includes display of the accepted article and online supporting material in electronic form on the internet before and/or after print publication. Although we usually suggest that authors transfer the copyright to the MWP, at the author's request the rights can remain with the author(s) of a book or an article in a journal or proceedings volume.
After a paper is accepted for publication, the MWP will send out a Copyright Transfer Agreement (PDF) to all authors of the paper. Signatures of all authors of the manuscript are required. However, all authors do not necessarily have to sign the same copy of the form. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that signatures of all authors are submitted to the MWP; manuscripts will not be published if signatures of all authors are not received. Alterations to and substitutions for the Copyright Transfer Agreement are not acceptable.
Completed copies of the Copyright Transfer Agreement may be submitted to the MWP. Please read the terms of this agreement, and email a scanned copy of the signed original to the MacroWorld's Rights Department (copyright@macroworldpub.com).
Permission Requirements
Although the copyright statute and court cases call for a fact-based, case-by-case analysis to determine whether use of third party copyrighted material requires permission, it is not realistic or practical to assume that all authors are aware of the legal parameters. As Author, you have responsibility to secure permissions that may be needed to reproduce material created by other people, including images and text quotations.