Copyright Policy and Terms of Use for Authors
Open Access Articles
Articles that have the Open Access padlock logo can be shared and posted to websites or servers without permission. However, if you reuse figures or other parts of the article you must acknowledge the source of the material and you must comply with normal publishing ethics.
Articles with the ‘Free’ logo are not the same as Open Access and are subject to the conditions below.
Other Articles
All articles published in Geological Society books and journals that do not have the Open Access padlock logo, including ones that are free to access online, are subject to the conditions below.
- Corresponding and contributing authors have transferred copyright (and all rights under it), or have granted full publishing rights in their work, to the Geological Society of London.
- Authors who have granted a licence to publish are subject to the terms and conditions of use given below. They retain the rights outlined below.
- Authors who have assigned copyright have not forfeited their rights to use their contribution elsewhere, provided it does not directly detract from or undermine the Geological Society's legitimate benefits under the rights granted to it. Please note that authors continue to enjoy the following rights:
- Patent and trademark rights.
- The right to be identified as the Author (i.e. by asserting authors’ moral rights under copyright law).
- The right to ‘post preprints’ (i.e. Authors Original*, prior to peer review) to publicly accessible websites and to share with colleagues, provided that this is not done for commercial purposes. Note that the final published PDF may not be posted in such ways.
- 12 months after publication of the Version of Record by the Geological Society, the right to post a ‘postprint’ (i.e. Accepted Version*, in the final form accepted by Geological Society of London for publication) to authors’ personal web pages or to an institutional web site or repository maintained by the institution to which they are affiliated. It should be accompanied by a link to the articles’ abstract in the Lyell Collection. Note that the final published PDF may not be posted in such ways
- The right to incorporate the content of the contribution in other works of which they are the author, including personal compilations and books of which they are the author.
(* nomenclature recommended in Journal Article Versions: Recommendations of NISO/ALPSP Technical Working Group 2008, NISO-RP-8-2008)
In the case of 3 to 5 above, these rights are intended to help authors in their academic and professional work, and are subject to three conditions:
a. These rights may not be used for commercial purposes;
b. These rights should not be used in a way that involves duplicate publication that will compete with the Geological Society’s own publications; and
c. Each use must contain an acknowledgement to the journal/book as the original source of publication in the form:
“[Journal/Book] [Volume/Publication Year] [URL of the item as published by Geological Society of London] © Geological Society of London [Year].”
- All requests to reproduce or re-use the whole or a substantial part of authors’ contributions in another publication will be conditional upon the authors’ consent. Subject to the Geological Society’s approval, the party seeking permission will be instructed to write to request the authors’ consent, which can be assumed if they have not received a reply within four weeks. (Note that requests for the re-use of three figures, tables or text extracts less than 100 words in length are permitted without the authors permission.)
- On publication within the Lyell Collection, where we have an author’s email address in our manuscript submission system, that author will receive an eprint notification email with instructions detailing how to access and download their published paper from the Lyell Collection. These accesses are intended for sharing between all authors, but may also be granted to colleagues or other researchers. Accessed PDFs may be saved to the author’s hard drive or other personal electronic media but the ePub/PDF may NOT be used for commercial purposes or posted on openly accessible websites Authors of papers that are not included in the Lyell Collection will also be able to access a PDF, and the same terms and conditions apply. Details will be provided on publication.
- Other than the use outlined above no Society publication may be captured or downloaded electronically into any format without the Society's specific written permission.
- Permission must be sought for uses other than those defined above – please refer to our permissions page.