<copyright-statement> Copyright Statement

Copyright notice or statement, suitable for printing or display.

Usage/Remarks

The <copyright-statement> element is used in two contexts: inside the metadata of an article or sub-article and inside the specific metadata for a block object such as a section, figure, or table.
When used in the article or sub-article metadata, the <copyright-statement> refers to the entire document.
When the <copyright-statement> is attached to an object such as a figure, for example, it records the ownership of the intellectual property of the figure. The copyright for the figure need not be the same as the copyright for the entire article. If the figure was previously published, that information should be described using the <attrib> element, which is a container element for information concerning the origin of a figure, extract, display quote, poetry, or similar element to which it is attached. The element <attrib> can record where the object came from, who said it, who created it, etc.
Tagging Copyright Material
The copyright year and copyright holder are usually identified within the copyright statement, as this statement is expected to be displayed. The year may also be repeated in the element <copyright-year> and the copyright organization also be repeated in the element <copyright-holder>, for search and discovery purposes. Since <copyright-holder> is used as metadata not intended for display, that element does not include the face markup elements.
Multiple Copyright Statements
The copyright statement is allowed to repeat (within the <permissions> element inside the <article-meta> element), to allow an organization to tag information such as the following:
  • Several equivalent copyright statements, each in a different language.
  • Both a historical copyright statement and the current owner’s copyright.
  • The copyright statements for different countries, even if they are all in the same language.
Historical Note
In this Tag Set, the <copyright-holder>, <copyright-statement>, and <copyright-year> elements may be used only within the container element <permissions>. The current NISO JATS values are backward compatible with the last NLM version, but not with earlier versions. Specifically, in prior versions the <copyright-statement> element was allowed outside the <permissions> container element (although this was not best practice).
Related Elements
There are three copyright elements which may be contained in the <permissions> grouping element:
  • <copyright-statement>, which is the textual statement of the copyright intended for print and display (The full statement usually contains the copyright holder’s name and the year among other information.);
  • <copyright-year>, a metadata element that names just the copyright year (This is intended for metadata searching and aggregation and is typically not displayed. This element should match the year content of the copyright statement, but need not be an exact duplicate.); and
  • <copyright-holder>, also a metadata element that is typically not displayed. This element should match the content of the copyright statement, but need not be an exact duplicate.
Attributes

Base Attributes

Models and Context
May be contained in
Description
Content Model
<!ELEMENT  copyright-statement
                        (#PCDATA %copyright-statement-elements;)*    >
Expanded Content Model

(#PCDATA | email | ext-link | uri | bold | fixed-case | italic | monospace | overline | roman | sans-serif | sc | strike | underline | ruby | named-content | styled-content | sub | sup)*