UK Scholarly Communication Licence
A policy which allows researchers to retain the rights to their work upon publication
LibGuide from the University of Cambridge covering the basics of copyright for researchers
Database of publisher copyright and self-archiving policies
Handy video outlining the basics of Creative Commons licences
This resource is licenced under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence by Claire Sewell, the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries.
Publishing and sharing work more widely means a different set of copyright rules need to be followed. Educational and other exceptions which applied during study no longer apply when work is published in any form, including via a repository, and permission will need to be sought to use third party materials. For many researchers, the first time they have to deal with complex copyright issues will be when they are writing their thesis. This is a major piece of academic work which many will use as the basis for their initial publications in the field. Many institutions are also beginning to mandate that their researchers deposit an open access online copy of their thesis in the institutional repository as part of Open Research. This presents many problems for researchers if they have not spent time considering their use of third party materials and clearing permissions.
As discussed earlier in the unit, copyright is automatically assigned to the creator of a work as soon as an original work has been produced in a fixed form. The original copyright holder will always retain the moral rights (such as the right to be identified as the author) but they can sell or give away their economic rights (the right to make money from the work). In scholarly communication this is typically done via something known as a copyright transfer or publisher agreement.
Publication or copyright transfer agreements usually outline the rights and obligations of both parties during and after the publication process. It includes information on copyright, expected royalties and deadlines.
Researchers first need to check their local institutional or funder policy to find out who the original copyright holder is. Some institutions retain the intellectual property in the works created by researchers either working or studying with them and therefore they are the ones who can assign copyright to others. This is also true of researchers who are commercially sponsored where the sponsoring organisation will have some claim over the resulting outputs.
A copyright transfer agreement assigns the copyright in a work to the publisher. In traditional publishing this includes the economic rights to a work meaning that they now have the exclusive rights to make money from it. The rationale for this was that the publisher puts effort into turning the content into a fully finished and presented output and they want some return on their investment. It is important that researchers carefully check any agreements they are asked to sign - both to understand what they are agreeing to and to make sure that it does not conflict with any funder mandates about how they must share their work. Researchers should also remember that in many cases these agreements are negotiable and that if they are not happy with the initial offer they should approach the publisher. As with any documentation it is a good idea to keep a copy of any agreement so it can be referred back to later.
One area where copyright and scholarly communication frequently clash is Open Access. Funder mandates often stipulate that researchers must share their work widely upon publication to maximise its benefits whilst publication agreements will say that work must not be shared except under certain circumstances - something which results in a lot of confusion for researchers! The graphic below outlines the copyright in a work at different stages of the publication process.
Image created by the Office of Scholarly Communication, licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.
Up until the copyright or publication agreement is signed, the economic rights over an output still belong to the original copyright holder. After this the rights are usually transferred to the publisher meaning that the researcher has to seek permission and reference the work as they would with any other third party material. Although some publishers allow the final version of a work to be shared, most specify that it is only the authors accepted manuscript. This will usually contain the same content but look different to the final published version. For more detail on how this process works please see the unit on Open Access.
Open licensing is an important part of the process of Open Research. It offers researchers (and others) the chance to share their materials with the wider world in a way which specifies exactly what they will allow others to do with them. Not only does this help the original researcher to make a bigger impact with their work but it also enables others looking to build on this work to know which types of use are allowed without having to go through complex copyright clearance procedures.
Creative Commons licences are one of the most common open licences. Each of the six main licences are made up of a combination of the four elements below. Although each licence is different depending on what researchers want people to do with their work, each one includes attribution as a minimum.
Some researchers are confused by open licences and worry about what this will allow others to do with their work. This is a major concern in the arts and humanities where much of the academic argument relies on the interpretation rather than the reporting of scientific fact. Many are ofted reassured by the fact that Creative Commons have a legal protection built in which protects the original author from being associated with the opinions expressed by other works based on their findings.
Creative Commons and other licences offer handy guidance on choosing and applying the most appropriate form to an output. In many cases this involves simply selecting a licence and applying the correct statement to the work, but there are some other things that researchers should think about. Researchers need to ensure that they have the right to licence the finished work, particularly if they are creating adaptations or adding to the work of someone else. It should also be noted that licences cannot be applied to works that are already in the public domain. Finally, although attaching an open licence is an important step, researchers need to consider how open they are really making their work. They should think about the file formats they are using for their work and whether this might be a barrier - for example using a Microsoft spreadsheet to share results will not work for those who don't have access to the product!
