Copyright and Permissions

Using third-party material in your article

Authors are responsible for ensuring that any third-party material (e.g. figures, tables, photos, illustrations, trade literature, or data) is not used without permission. If such material is copyrighted, permission must be obtained and submitted with the final manuscript. The Editor and Publisher must be informed of any restricted-use content at submission. Acknowledgements must be included at the end of the manuscript, ideally in a dedicated section, and sources must be credited in captions. For more details, please refer to the  Springer Nature Third Party Permissions Guidelines. 

Copyright for subscription content

If you are publishing under the subscription model, you will be asked to either transfer copyright or grant exclusive publishing rights to the journal owner, depending on the journal. This helps: 

• Protect your work from copyright infringement, plagiarism and other legal issues; 
• Streamline reuse requests and support wider sharing within the copyright guidelines.

As the author, you still keep many important rights—these are outlined on the Springer Nature Retained Rights webpage.