Authorship and Copyright

When you create a work, you own the copyright. However, if you submit that work for publication typically you agree to give up your copyrights to the publisher. Depending on the wording of the agreement you sign with the publisher, you may not have the right to:

• post your work on your personal website,
• archive your work in a repository,
• or (if you're a teacher) distribute multiple copies of it to your classes over multiple semesters.

If you plan to submit an article to a scholarly journal, then it's a good idea to find out what rights that journal allows authors to retain. SHERPA RoMEO is a website that "aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world." It contains information on over 2000 journals, and classifies them based on how restrictive they are on author rights. 

SHERPA RoMEO's classification system. Green is most lenient, and white is most restrictive. 

One option an author has to retain some rights is to negotiate with the publisher. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international organization that "works to enable the open sharing or research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge." SPARC encourages authors to add the SPARC Addendum to any contract they sign with a publisher. This addendum allows the author to retain some of their copyrights. 

If you have questions about copyright, then you should check out the library's copyright information web page or email your question to mylibrary@tarleton.edu.