During the Covid-19 crisis we understand that some authors may not have access to equipment to enable electronic return of a scanned, signed Author Publishing Agreement. If this applies to you, please see these FAQs. If you are able, please return the full Author Publishing Agreement as normal.

Before Cambridge can publish a journal article (or any other journal content), we need a signed publishing agreement. Under the agreement, certain rights are granted to the journal owner which allow publication of the article. The original ownership of the copyright in the article remains unchanged. 

All articles in this journal are published Gold Open Access. A fundamental principle of open access is that content should not only be accessible, but also freely reusable for the good of research and humanity. We comply with this principle by asking you to select a Creative Commons licence for your article. The CC licence you choose will determine how your article can be shared and re-used by others. This journal provides various funding options and support for Gold Open Access publishing.  

If your article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will receive an email from Cambridge ([email protected])* asking them to complete an Author Information Form (AIF). The AIF will explain your publication and funding options and determine the terms and conditions under which your article will be published. It will also ask you to indicate who will sign the publishing agreement (this is usually, but not always, the corresponding author). 

The AIF will then ask you to grant us a non-exclusive licence to publish so that we have the necessary rights to publish your article. A non-exclusive licence means that the rights needed to publish the paper are granted to the journal owner on a non-exclusive basis, while the ownership of the copyright remains unchanged. In order to complete your AIF, you should ascertain in advance: 

• the requirements of your funders or institutions, who may set conditions for publications derived from their support; 
• the details of your article’s author list; and 
• who owns the copyright in your article. This is usually either the author(s) or their employer(s). In some cases the employer(s) may be governmental or other entities for whom special copyright conditions apply. 

If you are not sure who owns the copyright in your article, it’s a good idea to check your employment contract or speak with your employer about copyright ownership of content you have produced during the course of your employment. 

Authors should also ensure that they have all appropriate permissions for third-party material used in their article. 

Once the AIF is completed, the signer will receive an email from [email protected]*. Cambridge manages its publishing agreements using Ironclad and third-party software to collect digital signatures. 

Please note that an article cannot proceed to Cambridge Production without a completed publishing agreement.

* Messages regarding the publishing agreement might get blocked by mail filtering software and it may be helpful to add them to your ‘safe sender’ list or equivalent (or ask your IT Department to do so). If your manuscript has been accepted and you have not received emails from these addresses concerning the author publishing agreement please contact [email protected]. 

Frequently asked questions about the publishing agreement process, as well as examples of the kind of publishing agreement you will be asked to sign, can be found in our publishing agreement FAQs. If you have any queries about licensing terms and conditions, please contact [email protected].