Pure Open Access Journals allow the author to retain the copyright in their articles. Articles are instead made available under a Creative Commons license (usually Attribution-Only, or CC-BY) to allow others to freely access, copy and use research provided the author is correctly attributed.

Copyright on any open access article published by the Tropical Journal of Pathology and Microbiology is retained by the author(s). Authors grant permission to the Pathology Update: Tropical Journal of Pathology and Microbiology to publish the article and identify himself as the original publisher. The authors also have the right to retain patent, trademark and other intellectual property rights (including research data), and also to proper attribution and credit for the published work.

Publishers are empowered to act on behalf of the author through a copyright transfer or exclusive license to copy, publish, and adapt works, whilst protecting their integrity. In this way, publishers are empowered to do various things on behalf of the author, for example, to ensure that the article is widely disseminated, that all requests for the rights to re-use content and provision of permissions are answered efficiently, and to ensure that the original is correctly attributed.