Karl Mundt Library: Faculty/Staff: Tips from the Library: Author Rights

Author Rights

Authors will benefit by understanding their rights and negotiating with their publishers to retain rights. Such rights control the availability of the work to others as well as the author's right to use the work in his or her own classroom, website, etc.

In addition to the links below, see the YouTube videos, "Bargaining for Better Publication Agreements" by Kenneth Crews and "Open Access Explained!" by Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen.

Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum
Describes the SPARC Author Addendum to secure your rights as the author of a journal article. Provided by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), 2006.
Author's Rights, Tout de Suite
Author's Rights, Tout de Suite, by Charles Bailey (2008) is a very readable explanation of how authors can retain and manage copyright of their journal articles.
Copyright Management
“When you publish a book or a paper, many publishers will ask you to transfer all copyrights in the work to them. But that is not always to your advantage....” This site includes sections on "What Authors Can Do" and "Sample Copyright Agreements" and is provided by the Copyright Information Center, Cornell University (2009).
Authors' Rights
Basic information about author rights, from the ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit, 2010. Updated 2023.

Bargaining for Better Publication Agreements

In this 25-minute video, “Dr. Kenneth D. Crews, director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University, gives an overview of issues and strategies for getting better agreements that respect your scholarly works.”

Watch at least the first 7 minutes and, hopefully, you'll understand why it's worth watching all 25 minutes.
"Bargaining for Better Publication Agreements" is available on YouTube.

Open Access Explained

Learn why "open access" is a researcher's issue.

What is Open Access and Why? by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).

Open Access Explained!

Published on Oct 25, 2012 on YouTube.

"What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about. Make sure to watch it in HD and Fullscreen!"
Visit their website: http://phdcomics.com/tv
More info about PHD Comics at: http://phdcomics.com