A copyright agreement defines which rights you maintain or transfer, to what degree, and under which circumstances. It also defines what other people can and can’t do with your work. Check out our LibGuide on Copyright and Author Rights for more information.
Transferring copyright does not have to be all or nothing. Read the full copyright agreement carefully. Try to retain the rights that serve your needs:
Copy it for students
Place it on a course website
Reuse portions in subsequent works
Deposit in a repository
- NIH requires deposition of NIH-funded research to PubMed Central: http://www.pubmedcentral.gov
- Cornell University has a publicly accessible institutional repository: http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu
The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. The Author Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.
Complete the addendum: http://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Access-Reuse_Addendum.pdf
Print a copy of the addendum and attach it to your publishing agreement.
Note in a cover letter to your publisher that you have included an addendum to the agreement.
Check out the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine for other addendum options.
Many journals now make agreements with technology companies for the purposes of training their LLMs. Ithaka S+R has been tracking these agreements so that authors might be more fully aware of the what their publications can be used for. You can find that information here.
