Scholarly Publishing: Author's Rights

Copyright law gives the creator of copyrighted works exclusive rights, including the rights to:

• Reproduce the work in copies (e.g., through photocopying)
• Distribute copies of the work
• Prepare transitional or other derivative works
• Perform or display the work publicly
• Authorize others to exercise any of these rights

 As an author, you may be most interested in retaining rights to:

• Reuse your work in teaching, future publications, and other scholarly and professional activities
• Deposit your work in a university institutional repository such as Pilot Scholars.
  • Note: To be able to deposit your work in Pilot Scholars, it is important and a good practice to save copies of your pre-print (draft manuscripts) and post-print (accepted manuscripts). Most publishers allow authors to self-archive and post their pre-print and post-print publications on a personal website and/or a university institutional repository.

Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has produced a legal instrument that you can use to modify your copyright transfer agreements with non-open-access journal publishers. Read more about your rights as an author in the SPARC brochure.

This brief video, produced by the Institute on Scholarly Communication in association with SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), explains how researchers can maximize exposure and dissemination for their peer-reviewed article manuscripts.