PRN License Information

Preprints of the R-fMRI Network (PRN) is a preprint, open-access, free-submission, “peer viewed”, community funded "Jounral-like" Preprints of R-fMRI related studies. The goal of PRN is to supplement the current slow and inefficient “peer reviewed” journal publication system. The PRN includes an online repository of R-fMRI related studies, with perpetual access to maintain the scholarly record.

The PRN does not ask that copyright be transferred. However, we require sufficient rights to allow us to distribute submitted articles in perpetuity. In order to submit an article to the PRN, the submitter must either:

• Grant the PRN a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to distribute the article, and certify that they have the right to grant this license: “I grant the PRN a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article; I certify that I have the right to grant this license; I understand that submissions cannot be completely removed once accepted; I understand that the PRN reserves the right to reclassify or reject any submission.”
• Certify that the work is available under either the Creative Commons Attribution license, or the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license, and that they have the right to grant this license, or
• Certify that the work is in the public domain (we will store this information by associating the Create Commons Public Domain Declaration with the submission)

In the most common case authors have the right to grant these licenses because they hold copyright in their own work. We currently support only two of the Creative Commons licenses. If you wish to use another license then it is appropriate to indicate a more restrictive version for the PRN records (both of the licenses we support give us sufficient rights to distribute articles) and then indicate the more permissive license in the actual article.

Note that if you intend to submit, or have submitted, your article to a journal then you should verify that the license you intend to select does not conflict with the journal license or copyright transfer agreement. Many journal agreements permit submission to the PRN with the non-exclusive license to distribute. The Creative Commons Attribution license in particular, permits commercial reuse and thus conflicts with many journal agreements.

Publisher PDFs, referee reports etc.

It is usually the case that PDFs found on publisher websites or supplied as proofs are the property of the publisher, which often owns the copyright and/or licenses their use. Even if the author retains copyright or permissions in the article, the PRN cannot accept PDFs that have been downloaded from a publisher's website unless the PRN has a blanket agreement with the publisher (it would be too costly in administrative time to track individual permissions). The PRN also cannot accept papers that contain material written by someone who has not authorized that content to be distributed on the PRN. This includes comments by referees (which may have separate copyright protection) and, of course, plagiarized material.

Licenses granted are irrevocable

Authors should take care to upload an article only if they are certain that they will not later wish to publish it in a journal that prohibits prior distribution on an e-print server. The PRN will not remove an announced article to comply with such a journal policy -- the license granted on submission is irrevocable. However, granting rights for the PRN to distribute an article does not preclude later copyright assignment. Thus, authors are free to publish submissions that already appear on the PRN even when the journal publisher requires copyright transfer. Please check the policies of any potential publication venue before uploading to the PRN. (For the policy information of many publishers, see the SHERPA/RoMEO site.)

Copyright notices

If you have permission from a publisher to upload content to the PRN provided that you include a special copyright statement with the paper, the correct place for that statement is the first page of the text of the submission. Copyright notices should not be included in the separate metadata and will be removed.

If you have any additional questions about the PRN's copyright and licensing policies, please contact the PRN Editors (editor#rfmri.org) directly.

Revised from arXiv License.