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Copyright & Publishing for Graduate Students: Author Rights

This guide is intended to help graduate students explore and develop a better understanding of various scholarly communication issues, including copyright and fair use, retention of author rights, Open Access publishing, and Creative Commons licensing.

Author Rights

Control Your Intellectual Property!  Don’t Give Away your Copyright!

As an author you can opt to retain all rights but transfer to the publisher the single right of first publication, rather than completely transferring the copyright bundle as scholarly journal publishers often request.

 This will allow you to:

  • Maintain the right to disseminate your work
  • Maintain the right to use your work in your classes
  • Maintain the right to post your work on your own website
  • Maintain the right to post and archive your work in an institutional or disciplinary repository
  • Reserve the right to post the pre-refereed or even post-refereed version of your paper
  • Allow for the largest possible audience

Resources:

·         SPARC Author Rights Resources

·         SPARC Author Addendum (to retain rights)