Copyright and Intellectual Property

When you publish a book or a paper, many publishers will ask you to transfer all copyrights in the work to them. But that is not always to your advantage. 

When you assign copyright to publishers, you lose control over your scholarly output. Assignment of copyright ownership may limit your ability to incorporate elements into future articles and books or to use your own work in teaching at the University. Others at Cornell might be forced to pay to use the material in their teaching. 

Unless addressed in the transfer agreement, you may be forbidden by the publisher to do the following: 

• Post the work to your own web site or to a disciplinary online archive 
• 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 Cornell 
• Grant permission to faculty and students at other universities to use the material 

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has urged that "...scientists, as authors, should strive to use the leverage of their ownership of the bundle of copyright rights, whether or not they transfer copyright, to secure licensing terms that promote as much as possible ready access to and use of their published work." We present some copyright options that can help.

 "Copyright Services" by Cornell University Library licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

A copyright is actually a bundle of rights. Traditionally all of them have been transferred to the publisher as a requirement for publication, but it doesn't have to be this way. There are a number of other options available to you.

Option 1: You retain all rights and license publication.

The ideal solution from the author's perspective would be to retain the copyright and all associated rights in their work while licensing to publishers only the rights the publisher needs to conduct its business. You get to determine who can use your scholarship. 

You can, for example, grant the publisher an exclusive license for the first formal publication of the work (in print, digital ,or some other form). In addition, you might want to grant the publisher non-exclusive rights to authorize (or accomplish themselves) the following: 

• Subsequent republication of the work 
• Reformatting of the publication (from print to microfilm or digital formats, for example) 
• Distribution via document delivery services or in course packs 

The key issue with Option 1 is determining what are the minimum bundle of rights that the publisher needs in order to protect its investment in the publication. This will vary from publisher to publisher. We have some sample language that can help.

Option 2: You transfer your copyright, but retain some specified rights.

You can assign your copyright to the publisher, but at the same time reserve some specific rights for yourself. Rights you might want to receive from the publisher include: 

• The right to make reproductions for use in teaching, scholarship, and research 
• The right to borrow portions of the work for use in other works 
• The right to make derivative works 
• The right to alter the work, add to the work, or update the content of the work
• The right to be identified as the author of the work 
• The right to be informed of any uses, reproductions, or distributions of the work 
• The right to perform or display the work 
• The right to include all or part of this material in the your thesis or dissertation 
• The right to make oral presentation of the material in any forum 
• The right to authorize making materials available to underdeveloped nations for humanitarian purposes 
• The right to archive and preserve the work as part of either a personal or institutional initiative, e.g. On your web site or in an institutional repository.
• The copyright in every draft and pre-print version of the work. 

The weakness of Option 2 is that it is often difficult to anticipate in advance everything that an author may wish to do with a work, especially over time and with changes in information technology. 

The Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine can generate an addendum that can be attached to a publishing contract. The addendum reserves to the author the rights that are of greatest importance. 

Option 3: You can transfer all copyrights to the publisher. 

Option 3 is the traditional solution, but is the least desirable from the author's perspective.

 "Copyright Services" by Cornell University Library licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

Traditional, subscription based  journals’ (as opposed to open access journals)  publishing agreements will ask that you transfer, assign, or license all of your copyrights without monetary compensation. In exchange your article is published in a journal, which carries with it the opportunity for scholarly impact, promotion, and career advancement.

If you are publishing a scholarly book, the publishing agreement, transfer, license or assignment will often involve a monetary transaction: You receive a lump sum or royalties based on how many books are sold. In exchange, the publisher generally receives the right control the price of the books, the manner and terms of how the book is published, and if new editions or translations are created.

Publishing Agreements vary greatly. For example, they might ask for rights:

• To publish only in certain types of media (e.g. print books but not eBooks) or markets (e.g. Canada Only)
• To transfer all of the five exclusive rights you hold
• To transfer all of your exclusive rights, and license some back to you
• To license all or some of your rights on an exclusive basis
• To license all or some of your rights on an non-exclusive basis  

Sometimes with journals, the “exclusivity” period is only for 6 mos. or a year, after which point you’re able to post copies of the work on other sites or use it in other ways. This guide includes a number of example publishing agreements.

"Copyright and Intellectual Property Toolkit" by University of Pittsburg Library System licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

Often publishers agreements create significant barriers, for authors who want to reuse their work, or allow others to use it. Negotiating changes to these standard agreements can help authors avoid unfortunate barriers to reuse and sharing.

Examples of some common future uses that may not be allowed:

You wish to have an eBook version made available, or for a copy to be made available open access with a Creative Commons license

Your book has gone out of print, and you wish to have it made available through a print on demand service

You wish or have been offered to have your work  translated 

Depending on how similar subsequent articles are to your original, even these might count as “derivative works”—as to which the right to create may have been assigned to your publisher.

Some agreements prohibit you from posting a copy of the publisher version of the final article to your personal or departmental website, or a subject, institutional repository

This last point can be very important because some research funders request or require that work created with their funds be made available openly on the web. For example the Ford Foundation now mandates an open licensing policy that states "project grants from the foundation will include a requirement that the grantee widely disseminate all copyrightable products funded by the grant—including white papers, research reports, and websites—and license them under the CC BY 4.0 license"

 "Copyright and Intellectual Property Toolkit" by University of Pittsburg Library System licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

If you already know exactly what kinds of uses you want to make—such as posting to a personal or departmental website, making a later derivative work such as a translation, etc.—then you can try expressly adding this planned use into the agreement.

There a couple of ways to do this, one way is by adding language into the part of the publishing agreement in which the transfer occurs--"Notwithstanding the foregoing..." or "Except that nothing in this paragraph shall limit [your name] the right to...." and then inserting the rights/licenses you are retaining.

Another option is to strike through the language in the contract for example if the contract grants "exclusive" rights to the publisher for uses you want to retain strikeout and modify language to "non-exclusive." Initial the changes and submit a signed copy to the publisher. In many cases, publishers will accept changed contracts.

Finally you can add an authors addendum to your contract, more information about addenda can be found at the top of this page.

 "Copyright and Intellectual Property Toolkit" by University of Pittsburg Library System licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

Publish in an Open Access Journal that allows you to retain your copyright. Unlike traditional publishing agreements you either give them a Non-exclusive License to publish your work, or are bound by a Creative Commons license. A Creative Commons License is a tool that allows others to more easily share and re-use your work while ensuring that you get proper credit.

 "Copyright and Intellectual Property Toolkit" by University of Pittsburg Library System licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

SHERPA/RoMEO collects information about publisher policies related to online sharing (“archiving”) of works published in most journals. Journals and publishers are classified according to a color scheme that relate to the archive rights that authors retain. Authors are encouraged to research the policies of journals they have published in or are considering submitting a manuscript to in order to ascertain what rights in that work they will retain. Authors who wish to publish a copy of their articles will want to look for journals classified as green or blue, then check on any additional restrictions.

 "Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Author's Rights" by ACRL licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Publishers often make distinctions between three primary versions of a manuscript when detailing the archive or deposit rights retained by authors: the pre-print, the post-print and the publishers version.

Pre-print – A pre-print is the original version of the manuscript as it is submitted to a journal. While the authors may have sought help from their colleagues in selecting data analysis techniques, improving manuscript clarity, and correcting grammar, the pre-print has not been through a process of peer review. It typically looks like a term paper – a double spaced .doc file with minimal formatting.

Post-print – A post-print is a document that has been through the peer review process and incorporated reviewers comments. It is the final version of the paper before it is sent off the the journal for publication. It may be missing a final copyedit (if the journal still does that) and won’t be formatted to look like the journal. It still looks like the double spaced .doc file. Sometimes, the term “pre-print” is used interchangeably with “post-print,” but when it comes to permissions issues, it is important to clarify which version of a manuscript is being discussed.

Publishers version/PDF – This is the version of record that is published on the publishers website. It will look quite spiffy, having been professionally typeset by the publisher. Library databases will link to this version of the paper.

Generally speaking, publishers are more likely to be okay with authors posting copies of pre-print versus other manuscript versions. But each journal is different, and authors need to be aware of what they can do. The copyright transfer agreement is the best place to find this information.

From: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2013/12/16/understanding-your-rights-pre-prints-post-prints-and-publisher-versions/

 "Scholarly Communication Toolkit: Author's Rights" by ACRL licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.