After your article is published, there are article sharing and posting policies all authors need to understand to be in compliance with IEEE copyright policy. It is also important to understand IEEE’s policies on correcting metadata and removing access to content in the IEEE Xplore® Digital Library. Learn about IEEE’s position on text and data mining as well as IEEE’s relationship with Portico and Interlibrary Loan.
IEEE has provided definitions for each stage of your journal article life cycle. Also outlined are the IEEE article sharing and posting policies for each stage.
Posting Your Journal Article
Understand the IEEE article sharing and posting policies for each stage of the article life cycle.
Definitions
E-print: Digital text of a research article.
Preprint: E-print where an author posts a draft article on the author’s or another website. The preprint is the article in the form prior to submission to IEEE.
Author-submitted article: Version of the article originally submitted by the author to an IEEE publication.
Accepted article: Version of the article which has been revised by the author to incorporate peer review suggestions, and which has been accepted by IEEE for publication.
Final published article: Version of the article that has been reviewed and accepted, with copyediting, proofreading, and formatting added by IEEE.
Authors who have submitted or plan to submit their articles to IEEE may post their preprints in the following locations:
arXiv.org, TechRxiv.org, or any not-for-profit preprint server approved by the Publication Services and Products Board (PSPB)
Author’s employer’s website or institutional repository
Author’s personal website
IEEE does not consider this to be a form of prior publication. The following statement must be included on the initial screen:
“This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”
Upon acceptance of the article by IEEE, the author must replace the posted preprint article with either (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with the DOI, or (2) the accepted version of the article with the DOI and an appropriate copyright notice (as described in the “accepted article” section below). No other changes may be made to the accepted article.
Please note that once the article has been published by IEEE, preprints on locations not specified above should be removed if possible.
Unless the work is submitted as an open access article or with a U.S. Government, EU, or Crown copyright, IEEE authors must follow the copyright holder’s requirements.
Upon acceptance, the previously posted article must be replaced with either (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with the DOI, or (2) the accepted version of the article with the DOI and an appropriate copyright notice, as described in the “accepted article” section below.
IEEE authors can access their author-submitted articles in the Completed Articles tab of the IEEE Author Gateway.
Authors may share or post their accepted article in the following locations:
Author’s personal website
Author’s employer’s website or institutional repository
arXiv.org
TechRxiv.org
Funder’s repository*
Once accepted by IEEE, the posted article must be removed from any other third-party servers.
Unless the work is published as an open access article or with a U.S. Government, EU, or Crown copyright, IEEE must be credited as the copyright holder with the following statement included on the initial screen displaying IEEE-copyrighted material:
For articles under U.S. Government, EU, or Crown copyright protection, authors must follow the copyright holder’s requirements.
*IEEE policy provides that authors are free to follow funder public access mandates to post accepted articles in repositories. When posting in a repository, the IEEE embargo period is 24 months. However, IEEE recognizes that posting requirements and embargo periods vary by funder. IEEE authors may comply with requirements to deposit their accepted articles in a repository per funder requirements where the embargo is less than 24 months. Information on specific funder requirements can be found here.
For articles that are not published under an open access license and that use the standard IEEE Copyright Form, the author may not post the final published article online, but may:
share copies of the final published article for individual personal use;
use the final published article in their own classroom with permission from IEEE;
use in their own thesis or dissertation, provided that certain requirements are met.
Unless the work is submitted with a U.S. Government, EU, or Crown copyright, IEEE must be credited as the copyright holder with the following statement included on the initial screen displaying IEEE-copyrighted material:
For articles under U.S. Government, EU, or Crown copyright protection, authors must follow the copyright holder’s requirements.
Any third-party reuse requires permission from IEEE. Contact pubs-permissions@ieee.org for more information.
For articles that are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)
Author and third parties, including funder websites, may post, share, and use the final published article without permission, even for commercial purposes or to create derivative works.
Author retains copyright and end users have very broad reuse rights provided that they credit the original author.
For articles that are published under a Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, No Derivatives License (CCBY-NC-ND)
Author and third parties, including funder repositories, may post, share, and use the final published article anywhere without permission, but not for commercial purposes and with no changes to the article.
Author retains copyright but end users have very broad rights provided that they always credit the original author.
If an error is discovered within the metadata records for periodicals, conferences proceedings, standards, press books, educational courses, or multimedia files contained on IEEE Xplore, a request for correcting the error may be submitted to the Staff Executive – Publications. Requests shall identify the error, recommend an appropriate correction to the metadata, and provide a statement of justification for correcting the error. Acceptable requests include, but are not limited to, an author name is either missing from or spelled incorrectly; author affiliation is incorrect or missing; title of publication is incorrect; author order is incorrect; publication has missing text; publication has missing or incorrect graphics or figures; publication has an error in publication identifiers (DOI, ISSN or ISBN); and publication has been truncated or is missing pages. Such requests should be verifiable from comparing original submissions with the published work or the requester has provided sufficient documentation to justify the correction. Unacceptable requests are those that alter the author’s original intent of the article, or that involve a possible breach of publications policy.
The IEEE Executive Director has designated that the Staff Executive – Publications shall assign the investigation, confirmation, and correction of IEEE Xplore metadata to staff within the IEEE Publications department. Staff shall establish criteria and guidelines for correcting author metadata records in IEEE Xplore. Verification of errors shall include review and approval by the authoritative individual or body behind the publication record (such as the Editor-in-Chief, conference organizer, organizational unit, etc.). These criteria and guidelines, and changes thereto, shall be approved by PSPB before application.
If an error is confirmed using the established criteria and guidelines staff shall modify the IEEE metadata record itself and add an annotation to the bibliographic view in IEEE Xplore to describe the correction for the user. The full-text document (e.g., PDF) associated to the metadata shall not be changed.
In the event a case cannot be resolved, the Vice President – Publication Services and Products shall be the officer authorized to determine a resolution. The resolution shall be final and not subject to appeal.
Staff of the IEEE Publications department shall provide information at the last PSPB meeting of the calendar year summarizing actions taken during the immediate past 12 months.
Under an extraordinary situation, it may be desirable to remove access to the content in IEEE Xplore for a specific article, standard, or press book. Removal of access shall only be considered in rare instances, and examples include, but are not limited to, a fraudulent article, a duplicate copy of the same article, a draft version conference article, a direct threat of legal action, and an article published without copyright transfers. Requests for removal may be submitted to the Staff Executive – Publications. Such requests shall identify the publication and provide a detailed justification for removing access.
The IEEE Executive Director has designated that the Staff Executive – Publications shall assign the investigation and validation of requests, and removal of metadata access to staff within the IEEE Publications department. Staff shall establish criteria and guidelines for this process. Validation of requests shall include review and approval by the authoritative individual or body behind the publication record (such as the Editor-in-Chief, conference organizer, organizational unit, etc.). These criteria and guidelines, and changes thereto, shall be approved by PSPB before application. The final decision for removal, however, shall remain with the Vice President – Publication Services and Products.
If the request is validated and approved by the Vice President – Publication Services and Products, staff shall take the following actions:
The original metadata record shall be retained, but staff shall annotate the record with a note regarding the status of access to the full-text document.
The full-text document (e.g., PDF) associated to the metadata shall be handled with one of the following two actions, depending on the results of the investigation and evaluation.
Remove original full-text document and replace with a new notice that states the reason for removal; or
Retain original full-text PDF, but annotate with comments regarding the disposition of the claim.
The Vice President – Publication Services and Products shall be the officer authorized to determine a resolution. The resolution shall be final and not subject to appeal.
Staff of the IEEE Publications department shall document each instance for record keeping, as well as provide an information report at the last PSPB meeting of the calendar year about actions taken during the immediate past 12 months.
IEEE permits non-commercial text and data mining of articles published open access with either the Open Access Publishing Agreement (OAPA) or the Creative Commons license (CC BY). No permission is required for non-commercial mining of open access articles.
Mining for commercial purposes or mining of non-open access content requires permission from IEEE. Contact pubs-permissions@ieee.org for further information.
IEEE allows Licensees and Authorized Users to deliver a reasonable number of copies of Articles (including through use of Ariel or a substantially similar interlibrary loan transmission software) to fulfill requests from non-commercial, academic libraries located within the same country as Licensee; provided, however, that such practice:
complies with Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act and the guidelines developed by the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU Guidelines); and
does not result in systematic reproduction of the Licensed Products, any journal or issue of a journal, any Article, or any portion of the foregoing.
Currently, interlibrary loan is only available in the Academic License Agreement.
If you have any questions, please contact the IEEE Customer Center at onlinesupport@ieee.org.
