What is the right to self-archive ?
The right to self-archive the refereed postprint is a legal matter because the copyright transfer agreement pertains to that text. But the pre-refereed preprint is self-archived at a time when no copyright transfer agreement exists and so the author holds exclusive and full copyright. In general, when you publish in a journal you transfer copyright to the publisher. Most journals permit self-archiving, but it depends on the publisher’s copyright policy. Authors can also deposit the postprint inside the archive with restricted access. Authors may request that the publisher give back certain rights, e.g. the right to deposit the postprint in an open access archive, or to put it on your own homepage. Some publishers have stated that they grant these rights as a standard procedure. Copyright law gives the creator of copyrighted work exclusive rights, which may be both segmented and transferred to others. Source : http://eprints.rclis.org/copyright.
