T&F copyright advice. Author, beware. | Plan S

"The information provided by T&F, whilst having a veneer of assisting authors, is nothing of the sort. The nub of the matter is, T&F wants the author’s rights so they can own and control the content of the article. This does not seem right to me – the researcher should own and control the content that they created, based on the discoveries they made, and that were paid for by others such as taxpayers, a funder, or an institution – not the publisher. 

An author may well want a publisher to carry out valuable services, such as copyediting, etc, and they should be paid for those services. This does not mean they should own and control the content. It is, therefore, imperative that authors retain their rights so they can: 

• Make and distribute any print or digital copies of the content they wish 
• Distribute print or digital copies to any lecture, class, conference or other group, commercial or non-commercial, as they wish
• Share copies of and content from their article with whomever they choose (the entire world if wanted), whenever they choose, using whatever channel they choose.
• Use their articles in any other works they create as they wish, whether dissertation, thesis, or anything else
• Post their accepted manuscript wherever they choose, whenever they choose, whether their institution’s repository or a commercial academic network such as ResearchGate.

T&F is not alone in imposing such restrictions. Similar restrictions abound in other publishers’ terms and conditions. My recommendations: 

• Authors: Be aware; Read the terms and conditions carefully before signing 
• Researchers: Most importantly, retain your rights in line with advice from UNESCO, European Universities Association (EUA), Global Young Academy (GYA), LIBER and here, and others.
• Universities: step up to the plate and support your researchers, so they don’t have to deal with unacceptable and complex terms and conditions – adopt an institutional authors’ rights retention policy as soon as possible (see numerous examples on cOAlition S blog)..."