AMS Copyright Policy (original) (raw)

The American Mathematical Society (AMS), founded in 1888 to further the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs. The AMS upholds very flexible copyright policies for the books and articles it publishes and strives to promote wide access to its publications while preserving the integrity of the originally published works.

Authors must grant the AMS specific permission to publish their work (i.e., a formal "consent to publish"). This is a legal requirement that arises in part from provisions of U.S. copyright law. Authors are encouraged, but not required, to transfer copyright to their work to the AMS. In doing so, authors are able to retain rights to use their work for their own purposes, and the AMS is able to maintain the integrity of the work’s original publication by administrating legal rights and permissions processes on the author’s behalf.

For authors of papers accepted for publication in AMS research and member journals and proceedings volumes, a Consent to Publish and Copyright Agreement Form must be completed prior to publication. With this agreement, authors may choose to transfer copyright to the AMS, to retain copyright, and/or choose to dedicate their work to the public domain 28 years following publication (see Section 6).

Authors of AMS books complete formal contracts for the publication of their work with the AMS and may also choose to retain copyright.

Creative Commons Licenses

Authors publishing in Proceedings of the AMS, Series B and Transactions of the AMS, Series B, Communications of the AMS, Representation Theory, or Conformal Geometry and Dynamics retain copyright to their works, which are distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons (CC) License. Authors are required to select their chosen CC license before their articles move into the production stage. For more information on the AMS's Open Access program, please see our Open Access page.

Electronic-only Publications

For articles that will appear exclusively in electronic format, the AMS will register copyright with the Library of Congress on behalf of the copyright holder.

Author’s Use

Information on the ways authors of articles may continue to use their works following publication by the AMS may be found in Section 4 of the Consent to Publish and Copyright Agreement and on the AMS Open Access Journals webpage. Authors of AMS books should consult their Acquisitions Editor with questions regarding reuse of their work.

The following is a summary of AMS’s author-use policies for non-open access journal and proceedings articles:

An author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) or other draft version of the work, either before or after peer review, may be reproduced under a CC BY Creative Commons License by any means for educational and scientific purposes by the author(s). This means that the pre-publication draft of the work may be posted on the author’s personal website, contributed to the author’s institutional repository, and/or posted on pre-print servers such as arXiv.org, all provided that no commercial use of the material is made (no fees may be charged for access to or use of the material) and no derivative works are included.
Authors are also permitted to use part or all of their works published in AMS journals and proceedings volumes in their future publications, provided that the AMS-published work is not made available in any way on a standalone basis. This includes use of the work as part of theses and as part of other new works published with other publishers; however, it does not include posting the final, published version of the work online or in any capacity in which it is not included as a part of a new work. In any and all such reproductions by the author(s) or the author’s licensees, AMS’s original publication of the work must be credited in the following manner: “First published in [_Publication_] in [volume/issue number and year], published by the American Mathematical Society,” and the copyright notice in proper form must be placed on all copies.

Citation examples:

A paper first published in an AMS journal where the copyright was transferred to AMS should be credited in the following manner:
- First published in Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 63 (April 2016), published by the American Mathematical Society. © 2016 American Mathematical Society.
A paper first published in an AMS journal where the author(s) retained copyright should be credited in the following manner:
- First published in Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 63 (April 2016), published by the American Mathematical Society. © 2016 by [author(s) name(s)].

2. Author’s use of Third-Party Material in AMS Works

Authors of AMS-published works are responsible for obtaining permission to use any and all material in their work, such as figures, photographs and text, that is taken from another source. Authors should use the AMS's Permission Form to request permission from the rights owner(s) of all third-party material. Authors should request rights to use the third-party material in all editions of their work (current and future), in both print and electronic formats, and free of any restrictions which may limit the AMS's ability, either for itself or by licensees, to produce, publish, promote and distribute it in any territory, any language, and any format now known or hereafter discovered.

Authors requesting permissions using an online form or through email should include the requirements stated above in their requests. In order to include third-party material in the published version of your work, formal, written documentation that permission has been obtained from the rights owner(s) must be provided to AMS. Third-party permissions for which there is no such documentation, or that include restrictions, such as in print-format only, or for use only in certain territories, will result in AMS having to omit it from your work.

Please reference the U.S. Copyright Office website for information and FAQs about U.S. copyright laws.

3. AMS Journals - “Early View” and Version of Record

In Early View, articles in certain AMS journals are made available to AMS members for online viewing prior to being published in a journal issue. Early View articles are made available and tagged with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) immediately upon acceptance by the journal’s editorial board (after undergoing peer review and before copyediting). After copyediting, author proofing and final paging, papers will appear in their finalized form (i.e., the Version of Record) as a “Recently Published Article” before appearing in a published journal issue. The following journals are part of the Early View system:

4. Permission to use AMS Material

AMS permits the noncommercial use of its copyrighted works for educational purposes only, such as to quote brief passages or to copy small portions of content for personal use in teaching or research. Any republication, translation, systematic copying, distribution, or multiple reproduction of AMS-copyrighted material is permitted only under license from the American Mathematical Society.

Requesting permission from AMS

With the exception of Notices of the AMS, permission requests to reuse content from AMS journals and books are handled by Copyright Clearance Center.

See the Requesting permissions for AMS journal and book content page for information on how to request permission to use portions of material from AMS journals and books.

Permission requests for reuse of material from Notices of the AMS should be directed to [email protected].

Translation rights and licensed reprints:

Requests to license rights to translate or reprint AMS books should be directed to [email protected].

Please reference the U.S. Copyright Office website for general information and FAQs about U.S. copyright laws.