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.