Copyright and Licensing When You Publish in an Agriculture Journal

At this agriculture journal you keep the copyright to your own work. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 licence: anyone may download, reuse, modify and distribute the paper for non-commercial purposes with credit to you and to the journal. Commercial reuse needs prior permission and charges apply.

Most agriculture journal authors sign whatever the form says and find out what it meant years later, usually when they want to reuse their own figure. Ten minutes now saves that.

Copyright and licence are two different things

Keeping copyright while granting a licence is the arrangement at this agriculture journal. You have not given anything away; you have told the world what it may do.

What CC BY-NC actually permits

• Share — copy and redistribute in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform and build upon the material
• With attribution — the original authors and source must be cited
• For non-commercial purposes only

That last condition distinguishes it from plain CC BY, which allows commercial use too. Commercial reuse of an article here is not covered by the licence: it requires prior permission from the journal, and charges apply. Exact terms are on the content licensing policy page.

What keeping copyright lets you do

1. Reuse your own figures and tables in a later paper, a thesis chapter or a talk, without asking anyone.
2. Include the paper in your thesis.
3. Deposit the published version in an institutional or subject repository, or on your own page — permitted under Sherpa/Romeo Green.
4. Send the PDF to anyone who asks.
5. Translate it or adapt it for extension and teaching material, non-commercially.

Under a copyright transfer, several of those need the publisher’s permission. Authors are routinely surprised to need clearance to reuse a figure they drew.

Using other people’s material in your paper

In any agriculture journal the obligation runs both ways, and this is where authors most often create a problem for themselves.

Redrawing a figure does not remove the obligation if the content is substantially the same — cite the source. And a photograph or map taken from a website is not automatically free to use; the absence of a licence statement means all rights reserved, not permission granted.

The wording to use when you reuse something

Attribution is not complicated, but it has to be complete. For a figure taken or adapted from another paper, the caption should carry all four elements:

Fig 4: Response of grain yield to nitrogen rate. Reproduced from [12] under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence.

Or, where you have changed it:

Fig 4: Response of grain yield to nitrogen rate, adapted from [12] with permission.

Four things: what it is, where it came from, what you did to it, and under what permission. Missing the last one is the commonest omission, and it creates a problem after publication rather than before.

Where the licence sits in the wider picture

That combination — author-held copyright, immediate open access, non-commercial reuse and a registered DOI — is what an open access agriculture journal should offer. Worth checking against any journal you consider, because the four do not always come together.

Two situations that catch people out

Publishing a thesis chapter that is already a paper

If you hold the copyright this is straightforward: include it and cite the published version. If you transferred copyright to a different publisher for an earlier paper, check their thesis policy before pasting it in. Most permit it; some require a specific form of words.

Extension material and farmer bulletins

This comes up constantly in agricultural research and is worth being clear about. Turning your findings into an extension leaflet, a training module or a departmental bulletin is reuse of your own work, and since you hold the copyright, you may do it.

The question that needs care is whether the material is commercial. A free bulletin issued by a university or a state department is not. The same content inside a paid training course sold by a private company is, and that needs prior permission from the journal under the CC BY-NC terms. If a co-author or a partner organisation expects to use the material commercially, settle it before publication rather than after.

A short checklist before you submit

1. Do you know who holds copyright under the journal you are submitting to? Here it stays with you.
2. Do you know the licence? CC BY-NC 4.0 here — non-commercial reuse with attribution.
3. Is every borrowed figure, photograph or map cleared? Check the source licence, obtain permission where needed, put the permission line in the caption.
4. Is the author list settled and agreed, including the order?
5. Does anyone expect to use this commercially? Sort that out between co-authors before publication.

Five questions, ten minutes, and none of them get easier to answer later.

Authorship is a separate question

Copyright is about ownership; authorship is about credit and accountability. Everyone listed as an author should have contributed to the work and be able to defend it, and everyone who contributed materially should be listed.

The problems that arise — a head of department added by convention who did not contribute, a field assistant omitted who did — are far easier to settle before submission than after. Agree the author list and the order while the paper is being written, not when it is being submitted.

One sentence is worth memorising for any journal you consider: who holds the copyright, and which licence applies? If a site cannot answer both in one place, that is itself informative.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I keep the copyright to my paper?

Yes. Authors publishing in this agriculture journal retain ownership of the copyright of their own work. The journal does not require a copyright transfer, which differs from many subscription publishers.

What licence is applied?

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0. Readers may download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and copy the work for non-commercial purposes as long as the original authors and source are cited.

What counts as commercial use?

Any reuse for commercial advantage — reproducing an article in a paid training course, in a product brochure, or in material sold for profit. That is not covered by the licence and needs prior permission from the journal, with charges applying.

Can I put the published version in my repository?

Yes. The journal allows authors to deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice, in line with the Sherpa/Romeo Green policy.

Can I reuse my own figures in a later paper?

Yes, because you hold the copyright. This is one of the practical differences between retaining copyright and transferring it — under a transfer you can need permission to reuse your own figure.

Do I need permission to use a figure from another paper?

Yes, unless its licence permits reuse. Check the licence of the source article and give full attribution either way.

Related Guides

How a themed issue fits the normal process:

• Open Access vs Subscription: What Agriculture Authors Need to Know
• Publication Charges in Agriculture Journals: What to Expect
• What is an Indexed Agriculture Journal? Databases Explained