Copyright Policy and Terms of Use for Authors

Corresponding and contributing authors have transferred copyright (and all rights under it), or have granted full publishing rights in their work, to the Geological Society of London.
In assigning copyright authors are not forfeiting their rights to use their contribution elsewhere, provided it does not directly detract from or undermine the Geological Society's legitimate benefits under the rights granted to it. For re-use, authors should seek permission from the Geological Society, which will not be unreasonably withheld.
All requests to reproduce or re-use authors’ contributions, in whole or in part, in another publication will be conditional upon the authors’ consent. Subject to the Geological Society’s approval, the party seeking permission will be instructed to write to request the authors’ consent, which can be assumed if they have not received a reply within four weeks.
Authors may post pre-refereeing copies of their articles to publicly accessible websites.
On publication within the Lyell Collection corresponding authors will receive an email and URL enabling a specified number of accesses to free PDF downloads. These accesses are intended for sharing between the corresponding author and contributing authors, but may also be granted to colleagues or third parties for legitimate purposes. Once the accesses are exhausted further free author downloads will not be possible without permission from the Geological Society. Accessed PDFs may be saved to the author’s hard drive or other personal electronic media and emailed or copied to colleagues or third parties (again, for legitimate purposes only). Authors of papers that are not included in the Lyell Collection will also be able to access a PDF, and the same terms and conditions apply. Details will be provided on publication.
Other than the use outlined above no Society publication may be captured or downloaded electronically into any format without the Society's specific written permission.
Before final publication, when the Geological Society accepts a work for publication, the authors may post it in its final accepted form on their personal servers or on their institution’s internal website or intranet, or in an online repository. Any such posted work must be accompanied by a notice: Accepted for publication in <name of publication> as of <date>. After publication, it should be accompanied by a link to the abstract of the article in the Lyell Collection.
Authors may not post the final PDF or any proof version of the paper to any website, including repositories of any kind.