Copyright

The ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit and SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) offer the following information and suggestions for managing your copyright rights.

• Copyright law gives the creator of copyrighted works exclusive rights, including:
  • to reproduce the work in copies (e.g., through photocopying);
  • to distribute copies of the work;
  • to prepare transitional or other derivative works;
  • to perform or display the work publicly;
  • to authorize others to exercise any of these rights.

 

 

• Your works are protected by copyright as soon as you fix them in a tangible medium, including electronic media.

 

• When you write an article for a scholarly journal, you are typically asked to sign a publication agreement or a copyright transfer agreement. The purpose of the document is to transfer your ownership of copyright to the publisher. Unless addressed in the transfer agreement, the publisher may forbid an author to do the following:
  • Post the work to the author’s own web site, an institutional repository, or a subject-based repository.
  • Copy the work for distribution to students.
  • Use the work as the basis for future articles or other works.
  • Give permission for the work to be used in a course at the author’s institution.
  • Grant permission to faculty and students at other universities to use the material.

 

 

• Copyright is actually a bundle or package of the rights cited above. Scholars (creators) can “unbundle” these rights and transfer only some of them to publishers. For example:
  • The creator transfers ownership of the copyright, but retains the right to do certain things like include articles in course packs, or place articles on a personal web site or an institutional repository.
  • The creator retains ownership of the copyright and grants a non-exclusive license to the publisher, typically for the right of first formal publication.

 

For all of the above reasons, many universities and institutions have encouraged authors to better manage their copyrights.

Sample Publication Agreements

• Elsevier (Copyright Transfer Agreement):
  http://www.elsevier.com/framework_products/promis_misc/622790escta.pdf

 

• Society For Applied Philosophy (Copyright Assignment Form)
  http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/japp_caf.pdf

 

• Blackwell Publishing (Exclusive License Form)
  http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/PAPQ_ELF.pdf

Know Your Rights As The Author

• The author is the copyright holder.
  As the author of a work, you are the copyright holder unless and until you transfer the copyright to someone else in a signed agreement.

 

• Assigning your rights matters.
  Normally, the copyright holder possesses the exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and modification of the original work. An author who has transferred copyright without retaining these rights must ask permission unless the use is one of the statutory exemptions in copyright law.

 

• The copyright holder controls the work.
  Decisions concerning use of the work, such as distribution, access, pricing, updates, and any use restrictions belong to the copyright holder. Authors who have transferred their copyright without retaining any rights may not be able to place the work on course Web sites, copy it for students or colleagues, deposit the work in a public online archive (Institutional Repository), or reuse portions in a subsequent work. That’s why it is important to retain the rights you need.

 

• Transferring copyright doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
  The law allows you to transfer copyright while holding back rights for yourself and others. One way to maintain some or all of your rights is to attach an Author Addendum to any copyright agreement that you sign. See below for more information on author addenda.

Scrutinize the Publication Agreement

• Read the publication agreement with great care.
  Publishers’ agreements (often titled “Copyright Transfer Agreement”) have traditionally been used to transfer copyright or key use rights from author to publisher. They are written by publishers and may capture more of your rights than are necessary to publish the work. Ensuring the agreement is balanced and has a clear statement of your rights is up to you.

 

• Publishing agreements are negotiable.
  Publishers require only your permission to publish an article, not a wholesale transfer of copyright. Hold onto rights to make use of the work in ways that serve your needs and that promote education and research activities.

 

• Value the copyright in your intellectual property.
  A journal article is often the culmination of years of study, research, and hard work. The more the article is read and cited, the greater its value. But if you give away control in the copyright agreement, you may limit its use. Before transferring ownership of your intellectual output, understand the consequences and options.

The following websites provide publication agreement information for specific journals:

SHERPA/RoMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

CopyrightExperiences Wiki (law only)
http://commons.umlaw.net

Journal Info
http://jinfo.lub.lu.se/

Managing Your Copyrights -- Using an Author Addendum

There are a number of options available to you to manage your copyrights:

1. Amend the publisher’s version of the copyright transfer agreement.
   Sometimes changing a few words (“exclusive” to “non-exclusive,” for example) or substituting language for a particular section may be all that is needed. In many instances, publishers will accept the changes.

 

2. Develop your own publishing agreement and substitute that agreement for the publisher’s contract.
   Remember to grant the publisher those rights needed to ensure that your work can be included (at least on a non-exclusive basis) in aggregations of several publishers works (for example, in LexisNexis). Some publishers have accepted such agreements without objection.

 

3. Use a Standardized Author Addendum.
   Several different organizations, such as MIT, Creative Commons, Science Commons, and SPARC, have worked with lawyers to develop standardized author addenda. These addenda are legal instruments that modify the publisher’s agreement and allow you to keep key rights to your articles.
   1. Write or use a standardized addendum.
   2. Print the addendum, and sign and date it.
   3. Sign and date the publisher’s agreement. Immediately below your signature on the publisher’s form, write: “Subject to attached Addendum.” This is very important because you want to make clear that your signature is a sign that you accept the publisher’s agreement only if the publisher accepts your Addendum.
   4. Note in a cover letter to your publisher that you have included an addendum to the agreement.
   5. Make a copy of all three documents (the publisher’s form, your Addendum, and your cover letter) for your records.
   6. Staple the three original documents together.
   7. Mail the three original documents to the publisher.

Each addendum gives you non-exclusive rights to create derivative works from your Article and to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display your article in connection with your teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities. However, they differ with respect to how soon you can make the final published version available and whether you can authorize others to re-use your work in various ways. Below is a summary of the available options.

Science Commons / SPARC Addendum
The Science Commons/SPARC Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.

Access - Reuse:
You retain sufficient rights to grant to the reading public a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial license or similar license that allows the public to re-use or re-post your article so long as you are given credit as the author and so long as the reader's use is non-commercial. (This is a joint offering from Science Commons and SPARC and represents a new version of the former SPARC Addendum.)

Other Options From Science Commons
Immediate Access:
You retain sufficient rights to post a copy of the published version of your article (usually in pdf form) online immediately to a site that does not charge for access to the article. (This is similar in many ways to the MIT Copyright Amendment below.)

Delayed Access:
You also have the right immediately to post your final version of the article, as edited after peer review, to a site that does not charge for access to the article, but you must arrange not to make the published version of your article available to the public until six months after the date of publication.

SPARC Addendum (pdf):
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf

Science Commons/SPARC Copyright Addendum Engine
http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/completeonline.html

Creative Commons:
http://creativecommons.org/

Additional Options from MIT
MIT Copyright Amendment:
Developed at MIT, this amendment is a tool authors can use to retain rights when assigning copyright to a publisher. It will enable authors to continue using their publications in their academic work, to post them on a personal web page or deposit them into MIT’s Libraries’ DSpace repository, and to deposit any NIH-funded manuscripts on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central database. More information is available from the MIT Libraries.

MIT Copyright Amendment Form
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-copyright-amendment-form/

How To Use An Author Addendum
SPARC offers the following suggestions:

 

What If The Publisher Rejects The Author Addendum?

• Explain to the publisher why it is important for you to retain these rights in your own work.

 

• Ask the publisher to articulate why the license rights provided under the Author Addendum are insufficient to allow publication.

 

• Evaluate the adequacy of the publisher’s response in light of the reasonable and growing need for authors to retain certain key rights to their works.

 

• Consider publishing with an organization that will facilitate the widest dissemination of their authors’ works to help them fulfill their personal and professional goals as scholars.

Scholarly Communication | The Issues |
Alternative Publishing Models | Copyright |
What Faculty Can Do | What the Library is Doing