Copyright and Licensing

Description 

JFU is an open-access journal. Authors retain copyright in their articles and grant JFU the non-exclusive rights needed to publish, identify itself as the original publisher, distribute metadata, preserve the work, and administer corrections or retractions. 

Unless a clearly stated exception applies, articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). 

Policy 

  1. Under CC BY-NC 4.0, readers may share and adapt licensed material for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given, a link to the license is supplied, and changes are indicated. 
  2. The Creative Commons license applies only to material for which the author or another identified rights holder has authority to grant the license. 
  3. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission for figures, tables, photographs, instruments, substantial quotations, datasets, or other third-party material that is not covered by an applicable exception or compatible license. 
  4. Third-party material with different reuse terms must carry a clear credit line. In the absence of such a credit line, readers may reasonably understand that the article’s stated license applies. 
  5. Authors must disclose prior dissemination, including preprints, theses, repository copies, conference papers, or proceedings, and must cite or explain related versions where relevant. 
  6. JFU does not acquire ownership of an author’s dataset, software, patent, invention, or other intellectual property merely by publishing an article. 
  7. The copyright holder, year, license name, and permanent license link must appear consistently on the article landing page, PDF, HTML, and machine-readable metadata. 
  8. The phrase “All rights reserved” must not be used in a way that contradicts the permissions granted by CC BY-NC 4.0. 
  9. Commercial reuse beyond the license requires permission from the relevant rights holder. 

Technical Operational Steps 

  1. At submission, authors confirm originality, authority to submit, disclosure of prior dissemination, and responsibility for permissions. 
  2. Before acceptance, the Journal Office checks permission statements and credit lines for third-party content. 
  3. Authors accept the journal’s version-controlled license-to-publish terms before publication. 
  4. The production editor applies identical copyright and license wording across PDF, HTML, landing page, and metadata. 
  5. The final wording should read: “Copyright © [year] The Author(s). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.” 
  6. When third-party material is excluded from the article license, the production editor inserts a specific credit line beside that material. 
  7. A licensing or attribution error is corrected in every affected format and metadata record. 
  8. Commercial-use inquiries are referred to the relevant copyright holder unless JFU has express authority to act. 
  9. Intellectual-property disputes are documented and may be referred for institutional or legal review.