Author rights

Authors have a lot to worry about when publishing scholarly books and articles. One issue that is often not at the forefront of their minds is copyright. Libraries can serve a key role in helping Purdue’s faculty authors manage their copyrights, in addition to providing a central repository to store their research before and after it is published.

Rights to retain

It is important for authors to retain their rights to use their own work as they need to as well as retaining the rights that help others (students, fellow researchers, the University) use it most effectively.

Publication agreements usually leave some rights with the author, but authors need to be aware of what to look for to ensure that they retain the rights they need. The following rights are recommended for all authors to retain:

  • Right to use work in teaching and subsequent scholarship
  • Right to distribute to students and colleagues
  • Right to use for presentations and later publications
  • Right to deposit in an open online archive

(adapted from presentation by Kevin Smith at the ARL/ACRL Institute for Scholarly Communication, July 18-20, 2007)

Resources

The Copyright Office is available to consult with faculty members on their publishing agreements. For more information, visit www.lib.purdue.edu/uco.

In addition, University Senate recently approved passage of the CIC Author’s Rights Addendum. The CIC Author’s Copyright Contract Addendum is designed to be used in conjunction with publishing agreements to protect some of the key rights of the author, including the right to create derivative works and to use these works in instruction and conference proceedings; to make the work available online through an institutional or disciplinary repository after a six month period; and to grant the author’s employing university the ability to make copies of and distribute the work for academic and professional activities. (source: CIC Addendum)

For more information about the CIC’s involvement in scholarly communication, please visit their website.

 

For more information on author rights, see the following resources:

“Balancing author and publisher rights” by Peter Suber in SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue 110, June 2, 2007
SPARC’s Copyright Resources for Authors
SPARC Author Rights Promotion