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copyright assignment

I just turned in the camera copy for a paper to be published this spring in the EvoWorkshops conference in Switzerland. Part of this process is the little discussed humiliation every academic author goes through: giving up ownership of their words to the publisher. The agreement is below. Not putting my own most polished words on my own website is the most odious term.

It is herein agreed that:

The copyright to the contribution identified above is transferred to Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York (for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable). The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the contribution, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online), or any other reproductions of similar nature.

The Author may publish his/her contribution on his/her personal Web page provided that he/she creates a link to the above mentioned volume of LNCS at the Springer-Verlag server or to the LNCS series Homepage (URL: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html) and that together with this electronic version it is clearly pointed out, by prominently adding "(c) Springer-Verlag", that the copyright for this contribution is held by Springer. From the Publisher's point of view, it would be desirable that the full-text version be made available from the Author's Web page only after a delay of 12 months following the publication of the book, whereas such a delay is not required for the abstract.

The Author may not publish his/her contribution anywhere else without the prior written permission of the publisher unless it has been changed substantially.

The Author warrants that his/her contribution is original, except for such excerpts from copyrighted works as may be included with the permission of the copyright holder and author thereof, that it contains no libelous statements, and does not infringe on any copyright, trademark, patent, statutory right, or propriety right of others.

The Author sings for and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of any and all coauthors.

In returns for these rights:

The Publisher agrees to publish the identified contribution at his own cost and expense. The Authors are entitled to purchase for their personal use books published by Springer-Verlag with a discount of 33 1/3% off the list price. Resale of such copies is not permitted.

The undersigned hereby gives permission to Springer-Verlag to publish the above contribution to the above book.

Posted by spot at January 14, 2005 12:35 PM