Copyright & licensing

Copyright, licence and version of record

Authors retain copyright in their original article. When JPBS publishes an article, the final version of record is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), unless the article record clearly states a different arrangement required by law or a rights holder.

The licence applies to the published article as identified on its article page. The journal’s name, logo, website design and other non-article materials are not automatically licensed under CC BY 4.0.

The permission granted to JPBS

For publication, the authors grant JPBS a non-exclusive, worldwide right to edit for publication, publish, host, reproduce, distribute, communicate, archive and preserve the article in any format and medium, and to supply its metadata and files to appropriate discovery, indexing and preservation services. This permission enables JPBS to maintain the version of record and to make it openly available.

This is not a transfer of copyright. It does not transfer authors’ patents, trademarks, underlying research data, or other intellectual property that is not part of the article. Authors may share and reuse their work, including through repositories, academic networks and personal websites, subject to the CC BY 4.0 licence and any third-party rights.

What CC BY 4.0 allows

CC BY 4.0 allows readers to copy, share, redistribute, reproduce, adapt and build on the published article for any purpose, including commercial purposes. Reuse must give appropriate credit to the author or authors and the source, link to the licence, and indicate whether changes were made. Reuse must not imply that an author or JPBS endorses the reuse, and it must not impose legal or technical restrictions that prevent others from exercising the licence rights.

CC BY 4.0 does not remove rights in material that is not owned or controlled by the authors, and it does not override privacy, personality, confidentiality, patent, trademark or other rights. The article page and any credit line should be checked before reuse.

What authors must confirm

Before publication, the corresponding author must be authorised to act for all authors and confirm that the article is original, that all authors have approved publication, and that the authors hold the rights needed to grant JPBS the publishing permission and apply CC BY 4.0 to the article.

The authors remain responsible for accurate authorship, attribution, permissions, disclosures and compliance with the journal’s publication-ethics requirements. JPBS may ask for clarification or evidence of rights before publication where a rights question is reasonably raised.

Third-party material and special rights holders

Authors must identify any figure, table, image, dataset, text extract or other third-party material that is not available for CC BY 4.0 reuse. Before publication, authors must obtain the permissions needed for the proposed publication and identify the relevant credit line, licence or restriction. Material that cannot be cleared for the intended open-access publication may need to be removed, replaced or excluded.

Government employees, employees of organisations that own the work, or authors subject to institutional, funder or employer rights requirements must notify the Editorial Office before acceptance. JPBS will then record an appropriate copyright and licensing statement rather than misrepresenting the rights position.

• Previously published figures, tables, photographs, illustrations or substantial text extracts.
• Material supplied under a licence that does not permit the intended reuse.
• Content containing identifiable personal information, confidential information or contractual restrictions.
• Works in which an employer, government body, funder or another organisation owns or controls the relevant rights.

Sharing, corrections and the scholarly record

Authors may share a submitted manuscript, accepted manuscript and published article in line with this policy. Once available, the version of record should be cited when it is the appropriate source. Authors should not present a modified copy as the journal’s version of record.

A correction, expression of concern or retraction does not ordinarily erase the published article or revoke the CC BY 4.0 licence already applied to it. JPBS preserves the scholarly record and marks material accurately so that readers can understand the article’s publication status.