Originally launched online in 2001 by the Copyright Clearance Center as a joint project to streamline permissions requests, Rightslink has grown into a profitable and convenient way for publishers to grant and monitor a wide variety of publishing licenses.
Now, according to Michael Joyce, CCC's Rightslink business manager, CCC has launched an enhanced Rightslink interface with new capabilities. Rightslink allows publishers to place a rights and permissions link alongside their content wherever it is displayed online. The new functionality allows publishers to not only grant rights for digital or physical reprints, but to monitor, copy by copy, the digital hosting of online material as well as the ongoing status of multiple physical book reprinters.
Rightslink is already live on 6,000 publications, a number that will grow to more than 7,500 before the end of the year.
Karen Ryan, business manager of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which publishes about 50 books a year, said Rightslink has proven to be "user friendly. It gives us instant access to requesters and streamlines the [permission] process. It will definitely help our international sales."
