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I. Retaining Copyright

There are methods for authors to retain copyright to their journal articles, so that authors may be able to distribute their articles as widely as they choose. When signing formal license agreements with publishers, authors can use addenda to the license in order to retain their copyright. Authors should present the publisher with the addendum before signing the license to be sure that the publisher will honor it. Here are a couple examples that may help if you find yourself in these waters:

1. Retaining Rights to Use Your Works: Copyright Challenges for Faculty – available from the Scholarly Communications Center at NCSU Libraries, these addenda expressly allow authors to retain copyright and further disseminate their work in whatever way they choose. See: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scc/misc/language.html

2. Author’s Addendum; Retain the Rights You Need – created by the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) of the Association of Research Libraries, this addendum allows authors to retain copyright and disseminate their work. Additionally, it requests that publishers provide authors with a PDF version of their article within two weeks of first publication. See: http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html

A few discussions have recently arisen about the idea of self-archiving. Self-archiving is the practice of posting scholarly articles online, either in addition to or instead of publication in traditional journals. Many authors choose to self-archive in addition to publishing in the traditional manner in print or online peer-reviewed journals. Authors can self-archive on their own webpages or in institutional repositories [link to section] at a growing number of institutions. For more information on self-archiving, please see: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/

How Can You Self-Archive?

The first step to self-archiving is determining whether or not the journal you published in will allow you to post a copy of your article online. If you have used a publisher agreement addendum, you can post your article without checking with the publisher. If you have not used such an addendum, you will need to talk with the publisher about doing so.

Before you post your article online, you may decide that you would like to like to give your work a Creative Commons (CC) license. As a free service, CC provides licenses intended to promote creative uses of intellectual property while maintaining protection of these works. Several different licenses are available at the (CC) site. Authors may choose to put their work in the public domain or to impose certain restrictions on users of the work in the areas of “attribution,” “non-commercial use,” “no derivative works,” or “share alike.” In addition, after an author selects a CC license and registers the license, the licensed work becomes part of the CC searchable database of works that use CC licenses, thus increasing visibility of the work to the CC community.