An overview of rights that may be retained by the author under both traditional publishing agreements and open content licenses.

1. OPEN ACCESS
AND
AUTHOR RIGHTS
John Carey, MA, MLS
Hunter College Libraries
21st Century Scholarship Series
January 23, 2013

2. 2

3. 3

4. PAYWALL
Subscription
fees
Copyright and
licensing
restrictions
Makes journal
articles more
valuable to the
publisher
Makes published
research less
accessible to
colleagues and
less valuable to
public
4

5. OPENACCESSPUBLISHING
OA literature
is:
Digital, online
Free of
charge to the
reader
Free of
(most)
permission
barriers
“Free
availability
and
unrestricted
use” (PLoS
definition)
5

6. Open
Access:
the
“Green”
and the
“Gold”
OA Journals (“gold OA”)
 Peer-reviewed
 More likely than non-OA journals to let
author retain copyright
 May be non-profit (e.g. PLoS) or for-
profit (e.g. BioMed Central)
OA Repositories (“green OA”)
 May be institutional (e.g. Harvard) or
by discipline (e.g. arXiv)
 Do not perform peer review; host
articles peer-reviewed elsewhere
 May contain preprints, postprints, or
both
Source: Peter Suber, Open Access Overview
6

7. Who Is
an
Author?
Any person who “creates original
expression”
o text
o photographs
o artwork, etc.
Joint Authors
o Each must contribute original
expression to the work to be an
“author” in copyright sense
o Should agree beforehand about uses
of the work—each may be able to
exercise rights independently of
others
Source: OASIS Briefing Paper
7

8. Know
Your
Rights
8

9. Your
Rights
as the
Author
 The author is the copyright
holder, unless and until you transfer
that right to publisher
 The copyright holder controls the
work, including:
 Distribution
 Access
 Pricing
 Copying/reproduction
 Not all or nothing—you can transfer
copyright and keep some rights
Source: SPARC Author Rights
9

10. Consider
Future
Uses
Possible future uses of your work:
 Educational
 distribute to students (print or online)
 Professional
 conference presentations based on the
work
 collect previously published articles
together into a monograph or
dissertation
 Self-archiving
 deposit article in online repository
 Create “derivative works”
 “non-compete” clause may limit your
ability to publish new works in field 10

11. Know
Your
Duties
Self-Archiving: Sometimes
Mandatory
 Your source of funding may require it
 NIH mandate: must make article freely
available in PubMed Central
 NY State TAPFR
 Your institution may require it
 Harvard “DASH”
 MIT Faculty Open Access Policy
11

12. The
Transfer
of Rights
Traditional Publishers
 “Copyright Transfer Agreement”
or
“Publisher’s Agreement”
 Often assign full bundle of rights (or at
least key use rights) to publisher
vs.
 “License to publish” agreement
 Author retains any rights not explicitly
granted to publisher
 Available upon request!
12

13. “Open
content”
licenses
Open Access Publishers
 Creative Commons licenses
 Provides legal basis for author to
consent to open access
 Allows for unrestricted:
 Reading
 Downloading
 Copying/sharing
 Printing
 Storing
13

14. Publishing
Agreements
Are
Negotiable
Add Your Addendum
 The law allows you to transfer
copyright and also hold back some
rights
 Publisher requires only the permission
to publish the article
 You may insert language or attach an
addendum to retain rights
SPARC Author Addendum:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/Access
-Reuse_Addendum.pdf
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15. THANK YOU!
15
Sources:
 Smith, K. & Hansen, D. (2010). Copyright and author’s
rights: A briefing paper. Open Access Scholarly
Information Network. Available at www.openoasis.org
 Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition.
(2006). Author rights: Using the SPARC author
addendum to secure your rights as the author of a
journal article. Available at
http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/SPARC_AuthorRights2
006.pdf
 Suber, P. (2012). Open access overview. Available at
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
Image credits:
 Slide 2: Uppsala University Library
 Slide 3: U. of Victoria Library
 Slide 4: Denver Post
 Slide 8:
http://www.myspace.com/themadamehellsphere/photos/15505
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