building a repository of publishing contracts

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This is a call for help and contributions for a project that (if I get some collaborators) might be part of the maker challenge or might be something that lays the groundwork for a future project.

One of the tricky things about agreeing to and negotiating contracts for publishing something is an unfamiliarity with the options available. Unless you’ve done a lot of publishing, you might not have a sense even of what an author’s contract looks like. Even if you have published a lot, you might not know what a specific publisher offers—are you going to agree to write a contribution to a book only to discover that the publisher demands that you sign over your copyright and isn’t willing to negotiate? (That’s not a hypothetical example, by the way.) I’ve written about negotiating a new contributor’s contract; my experience of doing that and sharing the process suggests there’s a real hunger for advice on what contracts look like and what our options are for publishing.

What I’d like to see is a site where people can upload and share their contracts. There are possibly legal issues to sort through—I’m pretty sure that most contracts aren’t proprietary and therefore we can share them publicly, but I’m also pretty sure that most publishers might not like that. There are technical issues to sort through—what sort of platform is best for a project like this, allowing for public uploads of documents and controlled options for tagging and searching? And there are sustainability issues—this might be a project that is best run by an organization rather than an individual.

I’d love it if there were some THATCampers who wanted to think through these issues with me and to build a prototype of what it might look like. And I’d really love it if there were THATCampers who would be willing to contribute their contracts to it. (If you do contribute your contract, you probably want to black out your name and your publication’s name, but you’ll need to leave the publisher’s name visible.) If you want to contribute your contract, you can leave a link to it below or email it to me (<a href=”“>sarah.werner at gmail.com</a>)

7 Responses to building a repository of publishing contracts

  1. Dude, I would totally share my publishing contracts. Not that I have many. Maybe two. I almost wonder whether the best format for this is instead a Google spreadsheet with a form, à la the Adjunct Spreadsheet. Probably not, though, since people would be interested to read the whole text. Which means you’re looking at a database of PDFs or docs, and then relying on our old frenemy descriptive metadata to make the repository useful. Hmmm.

  2. Great idea. I think this would also be helpful for libraries with institutional repositories in dealing with the copyright clearance funtimes. I can’t tell you how much of a pain it can be to find publisher agreements on publisher websites – they hide them on purpose!

    For the ‘sharing the scholarly process’ angle, I know Heather Piwowar is also trying to get people to open up about their publishing process experiences.

  5. In the contracts I’ve looked at, there are no non-disclosure statements. The contracts might be subject to copyright but that doesn’t mean that we can’t share the ones that we’ve signed—it’s one of the reasons I’m suggesting we share our specific contracts rather than generic ones.

  6. I won’t be at THATCamp Prime, but I am also interested in contracts other people have signed. I’m currently in the process of negotiating with a publisher about publishing a print book, which would be preceded by an OA/CC digital project on the same topic. I’m calling it a digital project rather than a digital edition, because it is not going to be replicated in full as a print book. The digital project will have more depth/breadth than the manuscript (i.e. full text transcriptions, digital artifacts), but there would be a large percentage appearing in digital form prior to the publication of the print book. We’re trying to figure out the language to use in a contract so that the digital project remains under my full copyright (CC). Does anyone have any examples of such an agreement, if so, please send me a line (anna.kijas at uconn.edu)