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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. Please note that authors continue to enjoy the following rights:
  1. Patent and trademark rights.
  2. The right to be identified as the Author (i.e. by asserting authors’ moral rights under copyright law).
  3. The right to share with colleagues ‘preprints’ (i.e. Authors Original*, prior to peer review), provided that this is not done for commercial purposes, and to post preprints to publicly accessible websites.
  4. In the case of journal articles, and prior to publication by the Geological Society, the right to post a ‘postprint’ (i.e. Accepted Version*, in the final form accepted by Geological Society of London for publication) to authors’ personal web pages or to an institutional web site or repository maintained by the institution to which they are affiliated. 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. Note that the final published PDF may not be posted in such ways.
  5. The right to use the contribution in authors’ research, and in courses that they are teaching.
  6. The right to incorporate the content of the contribution in other works of which they are the author, including personal compilations and books of which they are the author.
(* nomenclature recommended in Journal Article Versions: Recommendations of NISO/ALPSP Technical Working Group 2008, NISO-RP-8-2008)

In the case of 3 to 6 above, these rights are intended to help authors in their academic and professional work, and are subject to three conditions:
a. These rights may not be used for commercial purposes;
b. These rights should not be used in a way that involves duplicate publication that will compete with the Geological Society’s own publications; and
c. Each use must contain an acknowledgement to the journal/book as the original source of publication in the form: 
“[Journal/Book] [Volume/Publication Year] [URL of the item as published by Geological Society of London] © Geological Society of London [Year].”
  • All requests to reproduce or re-use the whole or a substantial part of authors’ contributions 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. (Note that requests for the re-use of three figures, tables or text extracts less than 100 words in length are permitted without the authors permission.)
  • 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.
  • Permission must be sought for uses other than those defined above – please refer to our permissions page

  • IMPORTANT: Authors may not post the final PDF or any proof version of the paper to any website, including repositories of any kind.