Liscensing & Copyright Policy

Licensing

All content published by JSHMDC — the article text and any supplementary files submitted with and published alongside the manuscript — is freely accessible to read, view, and download in full, without registration, charge, or delay. Beyond simple access, any reuser who copies, distributes, remixes, adapts, or builds upon this content does so under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0): attribution to the original author(s) is required, and all reuse must be for noncommercial purposes only. Noncommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. No additional restrictions or terms are imposed beyond those of the license itself.

Research data that an author deposits separately in an external repository, rather than submitting as supplementary material, is not published by JSHMDC and is therefore outside this license. Such data is governed instead by the repository's own terms and by JSHMDC's Data Sharing Policy, under which authors are encouraged to apply a more permissive license (e.g., CC0 or CC BY) to maximize reuse.

Copyright

Authors retain full and unrestricted copyright of their published work. JSHMDC does not require a transfer of copyright, an exclusive license, or exclusive commercial rights as a condition of publication.

By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) grant JSHMDC a non-exclusive license to publish, reproduce, and distribute the article — in print and online — under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license described above. This non-exclusive grant to the journal does not limit or diminish any of the author's own rights described below.

Author Rights

Because authors retain copyright without restriction, the CC BY-NC 4.0 license governs how readers and the general public may use a published article — it does not limit what the author may do with their own work. Accordingly, and independently of the license granted to the public, authors retain the right at all times, without needing permission from JSHMDC, to:

  • Reuse, adapt, and build on their own article — including its figures, tables, and data — in presentations, teaching materials, theses, books, grant applications, and other derivative works;
  • Deposit and share the full text of the published article, without embargo, on institutional repositories, personal or departmental websites, and academic or professional networking platforms (e.g. Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, LinkedIn), and any similar platform;
  • Privately grant extra permissions to specific people or organizations — such as letting one publisher reuse the work commercially — that go beyond what CC BY-NC 4.0 gives the general public. Authors can do this simply because they own the copyright, independent of the license applied to the published version.

Reader and Reuser’s Rights

Anyone may freely read, view, and access published articles without restriction or registration. Any reuser — anyone who copies, distributes, remixes, adapts, or builds upon a published article, including libraries and indexing or abstracting services — must do so strictly within the terms of CC BY-NC 4.0: attribution to the author(s) is required, and all reuse must be noncommercial. Any reuse beyond these terms requires separate written permission from the copyright-holding author(s).