Copyright & Fair Use: Copyright
for Authors

• Negotiating Copyright Transfer Agreements - An instructional guide developed by the University of Oregon.  

• SHERPA/RoMEO – This site is useful for finding a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.  Each entry provides a summary of the publisher's policy, including what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit.  The journals are ranked on a color scale to help easily differentiate between four different categories of archival rights.

• What to Look for in Publisher Copyright Agreement Forms? - wide range of rights that authors can opt to retain or those granted to authors by publishers.

• Phrases to Look for in Publisher Copyright Agreement Forms

• Creative Commons - A set of copyright licenses free for public use that define the “middle way” between copyright and the public domain.

• Negotiating Guide - Scholarly Communication - Library Guides at Arizona State University

• Elsevier Rights & Responsibilities - Overview of Elsevier's author rights.

Jody Bailey, the UTA Libraries' Director of Publishing, presented on "Your Work, Your Rights: Retaining Your Copyright" on April 11, 2018. Please click the image below to access a recording of this 63-minute presentation, and for a PDF version of the slides, please see the link below the image. 

When you create a work and record it into a fixed medium, it is immediately and automatically copyrighted. As the creator of the work, you own the copyright and all the rights that go along with it. Many traditional publication agreements, however, ask the author to transfer all rights--including copyright--to the publisher. Depending on the agreement, you may no longer be able to use your work in future publications or teaching, distribute your work to colleagues, or post your work in an online repository. In essence, you have given up your exclusive rights to your own research and must rely on Fair Use.

Are you aware you might be breaking copyright law when you post your published papers on your personal web page? Do you know if your publisher will let you add an addendum to retain your rights?

An author's addendum helps you retain the essential rights to your work, while still giving the publisher the right to put your work in their journal.  They are are designed to attach to and supplement an existing transfer of copyright agreement.

• Science Commons -  Helps generate a form, developed by The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), which can be attached to a journal publisher’s copyright agreement.  Ensures that you retain 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.  From this site, you can also access an addendum developed by MIT.

• Peter Hirtle has published a comparison of the of the various author addendums in the article, "Author Addenda:  An Examination of Five Alternatives".