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MIT Press, Copyright, and You

We at Leonardo want you to understand copyright, its practical applications, and what MIT Press as your publisher and copyright agent will do to disseminate your article as widely and as effectively as possible.

The 1976 U.S. Copyright Law vests statutory copyright in an article with you or your employer. The right to publish an article can only be given by a written document from you. Without such a document, Leonardo would have permission for one-time publication, but not for the additional forms of dissemination that you, and those who would benefit from your research, have come to depend on.

MIT Press routinely receives requests from:

  • professors to copy articles for their students

  • other publishers to include the article (or a portion of the article) in an edited collection of articles, or to translate the article for inclusion in a collection of articles in another language

  • secondary publishers to include the entire contents of a journal in microfilm or microfiche editions, CD-ROM collections, or on-line databases of journals in a particular discipline

  • document delivery companies that provide copies of articles on demand to individuals and libraries

In order to effectively fulfill the information requirements of your colleagues and others who would benefit from access to your research as noted above, MIT Press asks that you transfer the copyright for your article to MIT Press or, in this case, to the Journal's sponsor, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST).

    Why? MIT Press assumes responsibility for preventing copyright infringement.

    How? MIT Press registers all of its publications with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress.

The MIT Press has existing relationships with all of the major information brokers. This enables MIT Press to act as an effective focal point for the administration of copyright licenses and applications.

MIT Press continually works to develop additional forms for dissemination of your article.

Some of these forms -- such as online publication, on-line databases, CD-ROMs of back issues, cumulative indices in various formats or simple reprints -- are developed and/or administered by MIT Press. Other systems are made possible by sub-contracts with vendors (such as the Copyright Clearance Center) whose systems can only represent publications in their entirety.

We support your right to reuse your own material easily.

You can:

  • distribute the article for classroom or research purposes in paper or electronic form

  • republish the article (or a revised version of the article) in a book you write, or in an anthology you prepare, giving first publication credit to this journal

What about multi-authored articles?

If an article is written by more than one person, we ask each person to sign the form. This will give us the clearest rights picture and allow us to defend against infringement on behalf of all authors.

What about illustrations?

Please see our Policy for Illustrations in Leonardo

If you would like to discuss any of these issues further, or have additional questions, please contact:

Subsidiary Rights Manager
MIT Press Journals
238 Main Street
Suite 500
Cambridge, MA 02142-1046

Tel: (617) 253-2889

E-mail: journals-rights@mit.edu

Additional Information