IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (eCF) was introduced to authors and volunteers in May 2004. Since its inception, the eCF has successfully proven itself to be a highly effective tool that not only accomplishes its main goal of transferring ownership rights of the intellectual property to IEEE but does so by also saving significant amounts of time and effort on the part of IEEE authors, volunteers, and staff.
Contact the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office (copyrights@ieee.org), if you should like to discuss any of this beforehand.
Information for conference authors
If you are an author submitting a manuscript to an IEEE conference, you must also submit an IEEE Copyright Form to the designated organizer/publication chair of your conference. Contact your conference organizer for more information regarding the use of the electronic IEEE Copyright Form (eCF).
Please note: If you do not complete a publication agreement with IEEE by means of signing and submitting an IEEE Copyright Form, your paper cannot be published by IEEE.
Policy
IEEE policy requires that prior to publication all authors or their employers must transfer to the IEEE in writing any copyright they hold for their individual papers. Transferring copyright is a necessary requirement for publication, except for material in the public domain or which is reprinted with permission from a previously published, copyrighted publication.
Upon transferring copyright to IEEE, authors and/or their companies have the right to post their IEEE-copyrighted material on their own servers without permission, provided that the server displays a prominent notice alerting readers to their obligations with respect to copyrighted material and that the posted work includes an IEEE copyright notice.
Authors are particularly encouraged to note the “Author Responsibilities” section of the IEEE Copyright Form, in which portions of IEEE PSPB Operations Manual, section 8.1.1.B (concerning statements in work published by IEEE are the expression of the authors) appear.