Publish book chapters without giving away the rights

Question

I'm currently writing a book where I, during the writing process, would like to try to publish some individual chapters (more or less unchanged) as standalone articles . Once I've written all of the chapters, I would then like to be able to do retain the full rights to my text even though it would heavily overlap with articles published in different journals.

Are there any kind of code words or licenses that I could look for in journals when searching for potential places to publish my book chapters in order to be sure that I don't give away the rights to my own work in this regard? I realize that I could ask the staff of individual journals directly, but I would like to know if there's a better way to scan potential journals to find suitable ones.

Answer 1

• You could give the publisher of the article a non-exclusive license (meaning, you retain the right to grant more licenses to others).
• Or, you could negotiate that you retain the right to publish the article later on in a book.
• Note that if the book happens to be your thesis, many (but not) publishers have copyright transfer agreements that allows you this particular reuse. I guess they got tired of allowing PhD students to reuse the paper for cumulative (stapled) theses.
• And you could check your local copyright law: in some jurisdictions you retain rights for secondary publication.
  E.g. in Germany you retain the right to use your manuscript for secondary publication under certain conditions (1 year embargo period, non-commerical secondary publication, the paper was written mainly by public grants).
• I'd guess if you approach the same publisher about the book who also published the papers, they may be more open to license the papers for reprinting in the book.