IEEE is committed to conveying to its authors a strong understanding of their rights and responsibilities. All papers or abstracts submitted to any IEEE conference or publication must be the original work of the listed authors and must not have been previously published or currently submitted elsewhere. Authors of plagiarizing works may be banned from publishing with any IEEE journal or conference for a period commensurate with the severity of the offense.

The IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office maintains an online collection of documents with definitive answers to questions about publishing policy, including:

  • IEEE policy permitting authors to post their papers on the web
  • Originality of submitted work (e.g., multiple submission)
  • Open access publishing
  • Misconduct and accompanying corrective actions (e.g., plagiarism, fraud, etc.)

Author posting of IEEE copyrighted papers

The IEEE Publication Services & Products Board has approved revisions to IEEE's author posting policy (Section 8.1.9 of the PSPB Operations Manual). The revised policy reaffirms the principle that authors are free to post the accepted version of their articles on their personal websites or those of their employers (Authors of IEEE open access articles may freely post the final version of their papers). The policy provides that IEEE will make available to each author a pre-print version of that person's article that includes the Digital Object Identifier, IEEE’s copyright notice, and a notice showing the article has been accepted for publication. The policy also states that authors are allowed to post versions of their articles on approved third-party servers that are operated by not-for-profit organizations.

IEEE Open Access Program

In August 2010, the IEEE Board of Directors approved a five-point statement on Open Access and Public Access (PDF, 71 KB) to engage the organization in the continuing public dialogue on open access scholarly publishing. The statement authorized the extension of an open access option for authors to select for their submitted articles.

Plagiarism

The following are links to important information about plagiarism, how to avoid it when writing a paper, and what actions to take if it is discovered.

Multiple submission and originality of submitted work

IEEE’s policies on the originality of an author’s work begin with the following simple statement: "Authors should only submit original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication nor which is under review for another publication." The following links offer further clarification on IEEE policies on originality of content.

Additional information on author rights and responsibilities

Visit the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office website for information on a range of IPR-related topics, such as trademarks, plagiarism, multiple submission, and permissions.

The PSPB Operations Manual (PDF, 1 MB) provides information on policy and procedures for publishing volunteers, as well as IEEE authors.

An FAQ on Intellectual Property Rights for IEEE Authors (PDF, 397 KB) brings together key information for IEEE policy that all authors need to know.

If you have questions or would like additional information, please contact us at copyrights@ieee.org