The following resources provide guidance for determining when you need to request permission to reprint copyrighted material.
To disseminate your scholaship to the widest possible audience, make sure you retain the right to post your work to repositories, such as the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Most law school affiliated journals will not have a problem with this as long as you also post the journal citation.
When you publish with a commercially produced journal rather than a law school journal, the rights you retain as the author will vary depending upon the publisher. SPARC has produced a brochure identifying the rights authors have as copyright holders and provides advice on how to retain rights to ensure the broadest practical access to your articles. They also provide an Author Addendum to help you retain rights and offer tips on what to do if a publisher rejects the addendum. The SPARC resources and other information on author rights and publication agreements follow.
