It’s all the same to me!: Copyright, contracts, and publisher self-archiving policies

Abstract

This article explores how publisher polices that distinguish between differently-formatted versions of an article do not correlate with what copyright law considers to be separate "works". Under copyright law, only substantial differences in -creative expression- will create a separate work; a manuscript has the same copyright as the identical text formatted for printing. Regardless of publisher policies, If authors retain copyright ownership, they can archive any version of an article that they wish.