Copyright Licensing Agreement (non-research articles)

All research articles within BioMed Central are published under our Open Access agreement. For other article types the following conditions apply; the full legal copyright agreement is available online. Please print out and sign a copy of the full copyright agreement and return it to the editorial team who are dealing with your article. Below follows a re-cap of the main points of the licence.

1. The authors keep their copyright
   
   
2. The authors grant BioMed Central an exclusive licence to publish this article for two years, after which the licence becomes a non-exclusive one (so, after two years others can be granted a licence as well)
   
   
3. The exclusive licence gives BioMed Central the right to publish, translate, make summaries and other derivatives, and license others
   
   
4. Authors may at any time:
• reproduce the article in a book or thesis
• use the article for teaching
• put a copy on their web site, as long as they include a link to the original article on the publisher's site
• re-use figures and tables in other publications


5. The authors certify that:
• they are the authors and copyright owners
• they have permission from the copyright owners if the article includes material provided by others or reproduced from elsewhere
• anything presented as fact is true and accurate
• there is nothing illegal (for example, libellous or defamatory) or confidential in the article