Copyright policies of academic publishers

Imagine you drew a beautiful picture of your pet cat and you want to show it to your friends. You tell your friends that you made the picture and that you own it. Just like you, people who create things like books, articles, and pictures own what they create. This is called copyright.

Publishers are people or companies who help other people share what they create. They may help someone make a book or an article, and then they print or put it online for others to read. In return, they often ask for money from people who want to read or use what has been created.

For academic publishers, they work with scholars who write scientific articles about their research. These articles can be very important because they can give us new information about things like medicine, the environment, and history. But just like any other published work, the article is owned by the author and the publisher.

If someone wants to use an article that has been published, they may need permission from the publisher. This is because they may need to pay to use the article, or the publisher wants to make sure the article is being used in the right way.

But some people think that academic publishers ask for too much money to use articles. They think that if the article was created with public money, then the public should have access to it without paying a lot of money. Some universities and organizations have even started creating their own open-access journals where articles can be read for free.

So, in short, academic publishers help authors share their research with others, but they also make sure that they are paid for their work. This can be a problem for some people who want to access the research for free.