Is self-archiving legal?
Texts that an author has himself written are his own intellectual property. The author holds the copyright and is free to give away or sell copies, on-paper or on-line (e.g., by self-archiving), as he sees fit. For example, the pre-refereeing preprint can always be legally self-archived. Self-archiving of one’s own, non-plagiarized texts is in general legal in all cases but two. The first of these two exceptions is irrelevant to the kind of self-archiving BOAI is concerned with, and for the second there is a legal alternative. Exception 1: Where exclusive copyright in a “work for hire” has been assigned by the author to a publisher-i.e., the author has been paid (or will be paid royalties) in exchange for the text-the author may not self-archive it. The text is still the author’s “intellectual property,” in the sense that authorship is retained by the author, and the text may not be plagiarized by anyone, but the exclusive right to sell or give away copies of it has been transfered to
