Purpose and Scope
This policy governs how Treata journals communicate permissions for reuse of published content. A license should tell readers and downstream users what they may do with a work and under what conditions.
The applicable license is a journal or article-level configuration and must not be assumed from the publisher brand alone.
License Selection
Journals should select licenses that are compatible with their access model, author agreements, funder obligations, and intended reuse conditions. Where Creative Commons or another standardized license is used, the exact license version should be identified.
Treata should not describe itself or a journal as using a particular license unless that license has actually been adopted for the relevant content.
Attribution
Reuse should provide appropriate credit in accordance with the applicable license and scholarly norms. Attribution should identify the original work sufficiently for readers to locate it and should not imply endorsement by the authors, journal, or publisher.
Open licensing does not eliminate obligations concerning plagiarism, research integrity, or accurate citation.
Adaptation and Modification
Whether adaptations, translations, derivative works, text and data mining, or commercial reuse are permitted depends on the applicable license. Users should not assume permissions that the license does not grant.
Where modifications are permitted, reusers should indicate that changes were made and should not misrepresent altered content as the authors’ original version.
Third-Party Content
Figures, photographs, datasets, maps, instruments, logos, or other third-party material included in an article may have rights terms different from the article’s general license. Exclusions or separate credit lines should be respected.
Authors should identify relevant third-party restrictions during publication so the final article does not misleadingly imply broader rights than the publisher can grant.
Machine-Readable Rights Information
Where technically feasible, article pages, metadata, and downloadable files should represent license information consistently. Accurate machine-readable rights data improve discovery, repository workflows, and lawful reuse.
Metadata should not advertise a license that conflicts with the visible article or publishing agreement.
Changes to Licenses
Licenses attached to published content should not be changed casually or retrospectively. Changes may require agreement of relevant rights holders and should consider whether users have already relied on the original license.
If a correction to an erroneously displayed license is necessary, the change should be documented transparently.
Permissions Beyond the License
A user who wishes to make use not covered by the applicable license may need separate permission from the relevant rights holder. Treata should provide or identify an appropriate permissions route where it controls the relevant rights.
The publisher cannot grant rights it does not hold.
Rights and Integrity Concerns
Licensing disputes should be distinguished from scholarly integrity concerns. A use can comply with copyright permissions yet still be misleadingly attributed, and a properly cited use can still exceed legal permissions.
Credible rights complaints may require temporary restriction or correction while ownership and permissions are assessed.
Journal Implementation and Version Control
This policy provides the publisher default framework. Each journal must configure the licenses it actually offers and identify any article-level exceptions.
Material changes should be versioned and preserved, and historical articles should retain identifiable rights information applicable to their publication.
Version Control
Version 1.0. This page is the canonical publisher-level text for the current version. Material revisions should be versioned and dated, while superseded versions remain identifiable so historical applicability can be determined.