The journal Education in the 21st Century applies a rigorous intellectual property framework to ensure the unhindered global dissemination of scholarly research while categorically safeguarding the legal rights of the authors. This statutory policy is formalized in accordance with international open-access mandates.

1. Unrestricted Copyright Retention

Authors retain full, unconditional, and unrestricted copyright and publishing rights to their manuscripts. The journal explicitly does not require, nor does it request, the transfer of copyright or proprietary rights from the author to the publisher. Authors possess the absolute authority to reproduce, distribute, publicly display, and authorize derivatives of their work.

2. Creative Commons Licensing

All published manuscripts are universally distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This open-access license structurally guarantees that any third party is legally permitted to copy, distribute, display, perform, and systematically adapt the published corpus in any medium or format—inclusive of commercial applications—contingent upon the strict provision of precise bibliographic attribution to the original author(s) and the primary publication in this journal.

3. Non-Exclusive Publishing Agreement

By submitting a manuscript for evaluation, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive license and the right of first formal publication. This legally empowers the journal to comprehensively publish, index, and digitally archive the accepted work globally under the aforementioned Creative Commons framework, without infringing upon the authors' overarching proprietary rights.