Describes the rights related to the publication and distribution of research. It governs how authors (as well as their employers or funders), publishers and the wider general public can use, publish and distribute articles or books.

• Copyright on any open access article in a journal published by Farname is retained by the author(s).
• Authors grant Farname a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
• Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
• The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 formalizes these and other terms and conditions of publishing articles.
• In accordance with our Open Data policy, the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver applies to all published data in Farname open access articles.

Where an author is prevented from being the copyright holder (for instance in the case of US government employees or those of Commonwealth governments), minor variations may be required. In such cases the copyright line and license statement in individual articles will be adjusted, for example to state ‘© 2016 Crown copyright’. Authors requiring a variation of this type should inform Farname during or immediately after submission of their article. Changes to the copyright line cannot be made after publication of an article.

License agreement

In submitting an article to any of the journals published by Farname I certify that;

1. I am authorized by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
2. I warrant, on behalf of myself and my co-authors, that:
   • the article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third party rights; 
   • I am/we are the sole author(s) of the article and have full authority to enter into this agreement and in granting rights to BMC are not in breach of any other obligation;
   • the article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy;
   • I/we have taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To my/our - and currently accepted scientific - knowledge all statements contained in it purporting to be facts are true and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.
3. I, and all co-authors, agree that the article, if editorially accepted for publication, shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. In line with Farname's Open Data Policy, data included in the article shall be made available under the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver, unless otherwise stated. If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, I/we will notify Farname at the time of submission, and in such cases not only the data but also the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver. For the avoidance of doubt it is stated that sections 1 and 2 of this license agreement shall apply and prevail regardless of whether the article is published under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 or the Creative Commons 1.0 Public Domain Dedication waiver.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.