Implications of the new copyright law for scientific societies

The new Copyright Law of 1976 has two significant provisions that will require changes in the relationships with authors of articles in research journals published by scientific societies. The first is the vestment of copyright in the name of the author at the creation of the manuscript or article. The second is the differentiation between the copyright of the collective work of articles and the copyright of the individual article. This report summarizes the implications and impact of these two provisions and others on the policies and procedures of the American Institute of Physics. The key change in procedure after the new copyright law takes effect will be the requirement of authors to transfer their copyright to the publisher at the time of submission of the manuscript. The transfer will be limited by certain rights that will be reserved for the authors in the use of their own articles. This procedure was adopted on April 1, 1977 by the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics for AIP owned journals. The report also summarizes an important remaining question for primary journal publishers which is the exercise of rights under copyright for abstracts and other items excerpted from journal articles.