Copyright & Licensing

Copyright & Licensing Policy

Ownership and Retention of Copyright

Authors who publish with the Journal of Machine Intelligence for Sustainable Industry Practices (JMISIP) retain full copyright ownership of their work. Authors do not transfer, assign, or surrender copyright to the journal, the publisher, or any third party at any stage of submission, review, or publication. In publishing with JMISIP, authors grant the journal the right of first publication, along with a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, and archive the work as described in this policy.

This author-retained-copyright model reflects JMISIP's commitment to genuine open access publishing, in line with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the recommendations of major open access advocacy bodies (including Plan S and DOAJ's "best practice" licensing guidance), which favor author-retained copyright over publisher-owned copyright.

License Applied to Published Articles

All articles published in JMISIP are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) — the most permissive Creative Commons license available, and the license explicitly recommended by major research funders (including UKRI, the Wellcome Trust, and Plan S signatories) as a condition of funding compliance.

Under CC BY 4.0, any reader, anywhere in the world, is free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, for any purpose
  • Adapt — remix, transform, translate, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial use
  • Access permanently and without restriction — no login, subscription, paywall, or embargo period applies at any point after publication

Subject only to the following term:

  • Attribution — Appropriate credit must be given to the original author(s), a link to the CC BY 4.0 license must be provided, and any changes made to the original material must be clearly indicated. This attribution may be given in any reasonable manner, but not in a way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or their use of the work.

No additional restrictions may be applied — under CC BY 4.0, no one may apply legal terms or technological measures (such as DRM) that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Full legal license text: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Human-readable summary: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Why JMISIP Uses CC BY 4.0

JMISIP deliberately selects the most open license available (rather than the more restrictive NonCommercial or NoDerivatives variants used by some journals) because:

  • It maximizes the reach, reuse, and citation potential of published research — directly serving the journal's core mission of ensuring research translates into real-world application and impact.
  • It satisfies the licensing requirements of the overwhelming majority of research funders, institutions, and open access mandates worldwide.
  • It aligns with DOAJ's published best-practice recommendations for open access journals.
  • It permits legitimate commercial and industry reuse of published findings — directly relevant to JMISIP's applied, industry-facing scope, where businesses and practitioners may wish to build upon, adapt, or implement published research.

Author Rights and Self-Archiving (Green Open Access)

Because authors retain copyright, and the CC BY 4.0 license is non-exclusive, authors are free — without needing to request permission from the journal — to:

  • Deposit any version of their manuscript (submitted, accepted, or published) in institutional repositories, subject repositories (e.g., arXiv, SSRN), or personal/departmental websites, at any time, with no embargo period
  • Include the published article, in whole or in part, in a thesis, dissertation, or edited book, provided the original publication in JMISIP is properly cited
  • Distribute copies of the published article to colleagues, students, or conference attendees for educational or professional purposes
  • Enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version (e.g., posting to ResearchGate, an institutional repository, or including it in a compiled volume), provided such use clearly acknowledges initial publication in JMISIP, including the full citation and a link to the published version and its DOI (once assigned).

Third-Party Content Within Submissions

Where a submitted manuscript includes material owned by a third party (e.g., a figure, table, image, or extended quotation reproduced from another published source), it is the author's sole responsibility to:

  1. Confirm that use of the material falls under fair use/fair dealing, or
  2. Obtain written permission from the copyright holder prior to submission, and
  3. Provide documentation of that permission to the editorial office upon request, and
  4. Ensure the third-party material is clearly and accurately attributed within the manuscript.

JMISIP accepts no liability for copyright infringement arising from third-party material improperly included in a submitted or published manuscript; responsibility rests with the submitting author(s).

Author Legal Responsibility and Associated Costs

Authors bear full legal responsibility for the originality of their submitted work and for ensuring it does not infringe upon the copyright, trademark, privacy, or other legal rights of any third party. Should any legal claim, dispute, takedown request, or liability arise in connection with a published article — including, but not limited to, allegations of copyright infringement, defamation, or unauthorized use of third-party material — all resulting legal costs, damages, fines, settlements, or other associated charges shall be the sole responsibility of the author(s), and not the journal, its editorial board, its publisher, or any affiliated party. Authors agree to indemnify and hold harmless JMISIP and its editorial team against any such claims arising from their submitted work. Authors are strongly encouraged to retain their own records of permissions, licenses, and approvals obtained for any third-party material used, for the duration of the article's publication.

Underlying Research Data and Code

Where a submission is accompanied by underlying datasets, source code, or supplementary materials (particularly relevant given JMISIP's machine intelligence focus), authors are strongly encouraged to deposit these in a recognized public repository (e.g., Zenodo, GitHub with a permanent archival DOI via Zenodo/Figshare, OSF) under an open license — ideally CC0 or CC BY 4.0 for data, and a permissive open-source license (e.g., MIT or Apache 2.0) for code — to support reproducibility, a core value of this journal. Links to these repositories should be included in the manuscript.

Journal Name, Logo, and Trademark

While the content of published articles is openly licensed under CC BY 4.0, this license does not extend to the JMISIP journal name, logo, visual branding, or website design, which remain the property of the journal and may not be used to imply endorsement, affiliation, or official association without prior written permission.

Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication, and License Compliance

Submission to JMISIP constitutes the author's assurance that the work is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not under consideration by another journal. Duplicate submission, plagiarism, or misrepresentation of authorship is treated as a serious breach of this policy and the journal's Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement, and may result in rejection or retraction (see Corrections and Retraction Policy).

Changes to This Policy

JMISIP reserves the right to update this Copyright & Licensing Policy as needed to reflect evolving best practices in open access publishing. Any such changes will apply prospectively to newly submitted manuscripts and will not retroactively alter the license under which previously published articles were released — once an article is published under CC BY 4.0, that license is irrevocable for that specific published version.

Questions

For questions regarding copyright, licensing, permissions, or reuse of published content, please contact the editorial office at support@jmisip.com.