Permissions

Status: Published
Version: 2.0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3789/niso-rp-37-2021
ISBN (13): 978-1-950980-20-8
License: this recommendation document is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 UK

Provenance

JATS4R sub-group. Members (listed in alphabetical order):

Audrey Hamelers, EMBL-EBI (co-chair) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1555-5116), Martin Latterner, NCBI/NLM/NIH, Vincent Lizzi, Taylor & Francis (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2334-0265), Rhiannon Miller, Prepress Projects, Adam Palumbo, EHP/NIEHS, Michael Parkin, EMBL-EBI (co-chair) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8505-765X), Alexander Schwarzman, Optica (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6485-4158), Jonathan Watson, Emerald Publishing (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2620-0767)

Change history

This recommendation has been updated to a new version, with a new subgroup. Multiple changes were made.

Version 1 can be found here.

Context

<permissions>, <copyright-statement>, <copyright-year>, <copyright-holder>, <license>, <license-p>, <ali:free_to_read>, <ali:license_ref>, <app>, <array>, <article-meta>, <boxed-text>, <chem-struct-wrap>, <disp-formula>, <disp-quote>, <event>, <fig>, <front-stub>, <graphic>, <media>, <preformat>, <sec-meta>, <statement>, <supplementary-material>, <table-wrap>, <table-wrap-foot>, <verse-group>

@license-type, @start_date, @end_date

Description

This recommendation contains best practices for indicating the permissions (copyright and licensing information) associated with an article as a whole, with part of an article (such as a figure), or with the material related to an article (such as supplementary material). For a list of document objects and the corresponding elements to which <permissions> can apply, please see the table at the end of the recommendation. The permissions information associated with the whole document is contained within the article metadata.

1. Per the JATS documentation, <copyright-statement> and <license-p> are intended for display purposes only. The <license-p> element is the domain for editorial information and context. Links to licenses might appear within <license-p>, but those links should not be assumed to be machine-readable. The contents of <license-p> and <copyright-statement> should not conflict with the machine-readable elements <ali:license_ref> or <copyright-year> and <copyright-holder>, respectively.
2. In some cases, an article may contain document objects (such as figures or tables) that have licenses that are different from the license that applies to the article as a whole. For example, a CC-BY journal article might contain a figure reproduced from an article published under a non-CC-BY license. That figure must then contain a separate <permissions> element; every other article object will carry the permission set for the article as a whole.
3. Article objects will be considered to inherit the permissions as set out in <article-meta>, which applies to the journal article as a whole. Multiple components of an article can have their own <permissions> element and, if tagged as such, each of these components would not inherit the permission set in the <article-meta>. The separate <permissions> provided for the component must be complete, containing <copyright-holder> where <copyright-year> is present and/or <license>. 
4. Concerning @license-type on the <license> element: This attribute can be useful inside a closed system. However, in terms of reusing content, the values of this attribute have not been standardized (i.e. its values are not controlled and are therefore not usable by automated systems), so it can’t be used to provide reliably useful information, and therefore a formal recommendation has not been made for this attribute here.

Recommendation

1. <permissions>. (permissions on the whole article). This element must be present within <article-meta>.
   
   [[Validator tool result:  if <article-meta> has no child <permissions> ERROR]]
2. <permissions>. (permissions on objects within or related to an article). If any element within the article (e.g. a figure or a table) has different permissions from the article as a whole, <permissions> must be included in that element to ensure the object does not inherit the permissions that apply to the document as a whole. (See the complete list of article objects to which <permissions> can apply.)
3. <copyright-year>. When a work is protected by copyright (i.e. the work is not in the public domain), this element should be used and should contain a full four-digit year with no whitespace.
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-year> is not a 4 digit year ERROR]]
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-year> contains whitespace ERROR]]
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-year> is present and there is no <copyright-holder> in <permissions> ERROR]]
4. <copyright-holder>. When a work is protected by copyright, this element should be used and should identify the person or institution that holds the copyright.
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-holder> is present and there is no <copyright-year> in <permissions> ERROR]]
   
5. <copyright-statement>. The contents of <copyright-statement> should not conflict with the machine readable elements <copyright-year> and <copyright-holder>.
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-year> is present and <copyright-statement> does not contain the contents of <copyright-year> WARNING]]
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <copyright-holder> is present and <copyright-statement> does not contain the contents of <copyright-holder> WARNING]]
6. @xlink:href on or (depending on the DTD version). If a license is defined by a URI (e.g. any of the Creative Commons licenses), this should be the sole place that a machine (or anyone) should need to look for the license URI.
   
   1. For JATS version 1.1d3 and forward, the license URI should be contained within <ali:license_ref>.
      
      [[Validator tool result: if <ali:license_ref does not contain the URL for the license WARNING]]
   2. For JATS version 1.1d2 and backward, use the URI as the value of @xlink:href on <license>.
      
      [[Validator tool result: if <license> doesn’t have @xlink:href WARNING]]
   3. When a Creative Commons license is provided as the canonical license URI, the URI should be captured in a consistent, standardized format to aid machine readability. The URI should point to the top-level page of the license deed (not to the legal code, nor to sub-pages with translations), start with the “https” protocol prefix, include a trailing slash, and use the American spelling “licenses” instead of the British “licences”.
      
      1. For version 4.0 licenses, the URI should follow the pattern https://creativecommons.org/licenses/[license code]/[version number]/
      2. For pre-4.0 licenses, the URI may further include a valid jurisdiction abbreviation, for example https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/fr/
      3. For public domain licenses, where type is ‘zero’ or ‘mark’, the URI should follow the pattern: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/[type]/1.0/
         
         [[Validator tool result: if @xlink:href contains the canonical “creativecommons.org” URI, the URI follows one of the three patterns WARNING]]

7. @start_date attribute on <ali:license_ref>. This attribute is required if it differs from the publication date, or if there are multiple <ali:license_ref> elements tagged, to indicate which is currently applicable. If present, the attribute must contain a valid date in ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD format.
   
   [[Validator tool result: if @start_date is present and @start_date is not in ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD format ERROR]]
   
   [[Validator tool result: if multiple <ali:license_ref> and any of them does not have @start_date ERROR]]

8. <license-p>. This element is not required, but is intended for human readable consumption so there are no guidelines for the content used within the tag. Not to be used for the machine-readable, canonical URI for the license, but license ext-links in <license-p> should not conflict with that canonical URI
   
   [[Validator tool result: if <license-p> contains an <ext-link> and that <ext-link> @xlink:href does not match the canonical license URI WARNING]]
9. <ali:free_to_read>. Content that is not behind access barriers, irrespective of any license specifications, should also contain this tag. It is used to indicate the content can be accessed by any user without payment or authentication. 
10. @start_date and @end_date attributes on <ali:free_to_read>. If the content is only available for a certain period, then @start_date and @end_date attributes can be used to indicate this. If present, these attributes must contain valid dates in ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD format, and any @end_date must be later than any @start_date on the same element.
    
    [[Validator tool result: if @start_date is present and @start_date is not in ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD format ERROR]]
    
    [[Validator tool result: if @end_date is present and @end_date is not in ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD format ERROR]]
    
    [[Validator tool result: if @start_date and @end_date are present and @start_date is after @end_date ERROR]]

Examples

Example 1a: JATS version 1.1d3 and forward. Permissions that apply to an entire journal article

<article xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0" ... >
  ...
<article-meta>
...
  <permissions>
    <copyright-statement>© 2014 Surname et al.</copyright-statement>
    <copyright-year>2014</copyright-year>
    <copyright-holder>Surname et al.</copyright-holder>
    <ali:free_to_read/>
    <license>
      <ali:license_ref start_date="2014-02-03">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ali:license_ref>
      <license-p>This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution License</ext-link>, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.</license-p>
    </license>
  </permissions>
  ...
</article-meta>
...
</article>

Example 1b: JATS version 1.1d2 and backward. Permissions that apply to an entire journal article

<permissions>
  <copyright-statement>© 2014 Surname et al.</copyright-statement>
  <copyright-year>2014</copyright-year>
  <copyright-holder>Surname et al.</copyright-holder>
  <license xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
    <license-p>This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution License</ext-link>, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.</license-p>
  </license>
</permissions>

Example 2: Permissions that apply to part of a work (e.g. a figure)

<fig id="fig1">
  <label>Fig. 1</label>
  <caption>...</caption>
  <graphic xlink:href="images/fig1"/>
  <!--Here, this particular image is published under a copyright that is different from the one that applies to the article a whole (and is, in fact, all rights reserved).-->
  <permissions>
    <copyright-statement>The National Portrait Gallery, London. All rights reserved</copyright-statement>
    <copyright-year>2013</copyright-year>
    <!-- Note: no license element here: all rights reserved. -->
  </permissions>
</fig>

Example 3: Multiple permissions on a single article object (e.g. a figure)

The following examples illustrate a case where a single, composite figure is the subject of two separate copyrights. In this case, multiple <permissions> elements are given for that figure. A machine attempting to parse this, to determine the re-usability of that figure, would have to pick the most restrictive of the licenses (in this case, no license, or “all rights reserved”).

<article>
  <front>
    ...
    <permissions>
      <copyright-statement>© 2012, Alegado et al</copyright-statement>
      <copyright-year>2012</copyright-year>
      <copyright-holder>Alegado et al</copyright-holder>
      <license xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
        <license-p>This article is distributed under the terms of the <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution License</ext-link>, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.</license-p>
      </license>
    </permissions>
    ...
  </front>
  <body>
    ...
    <fig id="fig2" position="float">
      <label>Figure 2.</label>
      <caption> ... </caption>
      <graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="elife00013f002"/>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>© 1977 Thieme Medical Publishers. All Rights
Reserved.</copyright-statement>
        <copyright-year>1977</copyright-year>
        <copyright-holder>Thieme Medical Publishers</copyright-holder>
        <license>
          <license-p>Figure 1, upper panel, is reproduced from
<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="bib45">Hughes and Sperandio, 2008</xref>
with permission.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>© 2012, Alegado et al</copyright-statement>
        <copyright-year>2012</copyright-year>
        <copyright-holder>Alegado et al</copyright-holder>
        <license xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
          <license-p>Figure 1, lower panel, is distributed under ...</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
    </fig>
    ...
  </body>
  ...
</article>

Example 4: License with no copyright

<article xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0" ... >
  ...
  <permissions>
    <ali:free_to_read/>
    <license>
      <ali:license_ref>https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/</ali:license_ref>
      <license-p>This article is in the public domain.</license-p>
    </license>
  </permissions>
...
</article>

Where <permissions> may be applied in a document

Per the JATS schema, the <permissions> element is allowed within many other elements.

The following table specifies what content is covered by a <permissions> element that appears in a given location.

Document object	Element that may contain <permissions>	What the permissions cover
Appendix	<app>	Self
Array	<array>	Self
Article as a whole	<article-meta>	Closest parent article element
Boxed text	<boxed-text>	Self
Chemical structure	<chem-struct-wrap>	Self
Display equation	<disp-formula>	Self
Display quotation	<disp-quote>	Self
Event in history	<event>	Self
Figure	<fig>	The whole figure, and any associated files that do not have their own <permissions>
Response or sub-article metadata	<front-stub>	The closest response or sub-article parent
Graphic	<graphic>	The image file (@xlink:href) – and its description
Media	<media>	The media file (@xlink:href) – and its description
Preformatted text	<preformat>	The contents of the element
Section metadata	<sec-meta>	Closest parent sec element
Statement	<statement>	Self
Supplementary material	<supplementary-material>	The supplemental file (@xlink:href) – and its description
Tables and their captions	<table-wrap>	The table, caption, etc.
Table footer notes	<table-wrap-foot>	Closest parent table-wrap element
Verse group	<verse-group>	Self

History

Working: 25 Oct 2021 – 22 Feb 2022

Steering Committee review: 23 Feb 2022 – 8 Mar 2022

Public review: 10 March 2022 – 8 April 2022

Steering Committee review: 12 April 2022 – 12 April 2022

NISO Topic Committee review: 12 April 2022 – 6 June 2022

Published: 13 June 2022