Copyright

Creative Commons License

Beginning with TWC No. 25 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For an explanation of the journal's reasoning, see  the editorial, Copyright and Open Access. 

TWC Nos. 1 through 24 are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. For Nos. 1 through 24, TWC, not the author, retains copyright. Anyone seeking to reproduce content for profit, including authors, must obtain permission from TWC. Such permission is routinely granted for free. Submit queries to the Editor. 

TWC retains copyright in these issues because it was granted to TWC by the authors. At the time, TWC obtained copyright for three reasons: (1) because this is standard in the academic journal industry and it streamlines permissions because there is a single point of contact; (2) because we are committed to open access, and our policy ensured that authors could not abrogate this; and (3) because it permitted us the ability to grant reprint requests if the author became unreachable. TWC Nos. 25 forward are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For Nos. 25 forward, the author, not TWC, retains copyright. However, all authors have agreed to have their works licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits both noncommercial and commercial use with attribution. For that reason, entities, such as presses, who wish to reprint articles (even for commercial purposes) do not need to obtain copyright release paperwork. Because some presses may desire to obtain release paperwork on letterhead regardless of the Open Access nature of the text, TWC also requires authors to sign an agreement granting TWC the ability to provide copyright release on their behalf, so that TWC may provide documentation that will permit reprinting with attribution. This agreement in no way affects authorial ownership of the text; it is merely a way to create press-acceptable documentation for the reprint process.

We are a Diamond Open Access journal, allowing postprint archiving according to the standards established by the Bethesda Meeting on Open Access Publishing, and we are a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals. We believe images, including images altered by an artist to create a derivative artwork, and song lyrics may appear in TWC under fair use under US copyright law. Such images and lyrics are fair use because:

  1. They are lower in resolution and quality than the original.
  2. They do not limit the copyright owners’ distribution rights.
  3. They are being used in the context of academic analysis in a manner that contributes meaningfully to our culture.
  4. They represent only a tiny fraction of the whole artwork.
  5. They are hosted by the OTW’s servers, and the OTW is a nonprofit organization.