[midldei]

Why leave the paper out of the git repo?

If you are the author could you link to a copy of the paper?

[acorn221]

I've signed over the copyright to IEEE so I think I've got to ask them before I put it there - that is a great point though, I'll see if I can drop it in there.

[wizzwizz4]

The usual way this works is, you retain rights to the preprint. That's what preprint repositories like https://arxiv.org/ are for. Talk to your advisor, if you have one; if not, the folk over at Academia Stack Exchange are probably familiar with the exact rules of that IEEE journal.

[Terretta]

Is that how they do it, rather than you assigning rights to make copies, while retaining your own copyright?