Dancing with Wolves: How to Negotiate for a Fair Deal for Academic Authors

Abstract: Following the efforts of the open access and repositories movements, many (but not all) refereed journals have reasonable copyright terms. Publishers of academic books have been subject to less direct pressure, and in at least some instances the copyright terms they try to dictate are highly unfair to authors, and should not be accepted. This document summarises the interactions between a chapter-author and one such book-publisher, which culminated in a fair deal for the author.