Author Rights

Negotiating Publication Agreements
Publisher Policies and Scholarly Communication
Regents Policy on Intellectual Property

With their scholarship, research, and teaching activities, members of the university community create original works, eligible for copyright protection. Who owns these copyrights and how the owner and others may use these works is the subject of ongoing discussion in academia. The starting point for following the discussion lies in knowing what rights copyright law betstows on a copyright owner, and how authors and other copyright owners control and exercise these rights.

Negotiating Publication Agreements

Authors and creators enjoy six exclusive rights over their works until and unless they transfer or assign, any or all of these rights to a publisher, or another party. This bundle of rights is divisible among interested parties and with the emergence of new media and digital electronic publishing models the academic community is finding new opportunities and new incentives to retain some of these rights within the scope of scholarly communication activities.

Retaining rights matters because copyright transfer agreements govern what authors and others are allowed to do with their work. When authors transfer all of their rights to a publisher they may find they need permission from the publisher to make further use of their work. For example copying their articles for distribution in a class, making copies to share with colleagues, or follow-on development of an article - making a derivative work - might all be restricted when authors transfer or assign their copyrights to someone else.

Traditional publication agreements require transfer of copyrights from the author to the publisher, but this doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. Authors can talk with their publishers about transferring only those rights needed for publication. Authors can ask their publishers to allow them to retain those rights authors need to control noncommercial uses of their work.

Authors can also use addendum agreements. The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) offers a template addendum to modify standard publishing agreements. The SPARC Author's Addendum, can be included when an author submits a publisher's traditional agreement. The addendum asserts the author's right to copy and distribute the work for noncommercial purposes.

Another strategy for retaining and assigning rights is to publish articles with a Creative Commons license. These licenses allow authors to retain the copyright to their work, and can be used to set the terms and conditions by which others may use the work. Some publishers are satisfied with the rights that authors license to them through Creative Commons and will agree to publish your work under some of the Creative Commons license options.

Publisher Policies and Scholarly Communication

Journal publishers often have default policies regarding author rights. Some may be more author friendly than others, and the trend in academic publishing is toward greater sensitivity and flexibility regarding author needs. You can explore the default publishing policies of many academic publishers online. The SHERPA Project based in the U.K. maintains a searchable database of publisher copyright policies. This international resource provides summaries of publisher permissions requirements, copyright transfer agreements, and electronic archiving policies.

Digital technology is changing the ways the academic community disseminates scholarship. New Internet based publishing models offer opportunities to increase access and enhance the availability of research results to scholars and the broader general public. Open Access publishing, Intsitutional Repositories, and the burgeoning list of peer reviewed online journals are just a few examples of new publishing options available to scholars.

The Association of Research Libraries and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have developed Create Change an educational Web site that examines new modes of scholarly communication. This site and others like it can help academic authors follow the national conversation about opportunities to enhance scholarly communication in the digital networked environment.

Regents Policy on Intellectual Property

The University of Minnesota Regents Policy on Intellectual Property defines terms for the University in the copyright ownership landscape and sets the boundaries for individual ownership of work products. Two definitions in the policy at Section III are critical to determining ownership of intellectual property created at the University. The policy defines and distinguishes a "regular academic work product" from a "specially commissioned work." Familiarize yourself with these distinctions:

• Regular Academic Work Product. "Regular Academic Work Product" means any copyrightable work product which is an artistic creation or which constitutes, or is intended to disseminate the results of, academic research or scholarly study. Regular academic work product includes, but is not limited to, books, class notes, theses and dissertations, course materials designed for the web, distance education and other technology-oriented educational materials, articles, poems, musical works, dramatic works, pantomimes and choreographic works, pictorial, graphic and sculptural works, or other works of artistic imagination. Software specifically needed to support a regular academic work product or which is designed to disseminate the results of academic research and scholarly study is also considered a regular academic work product. A regular academic work product is owned by the creator, in this case, the faculty member, and not the University.
• Specially Commissioned Work. "Specially Commissioned Work" means a work specially ordered or commissioned and which the University and creator expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them shall be considered as such. The University is the sole owner of all specially commissioned intellectual property created through the use of University resources or facilities.