Posting research papers, articles, theses, posters, or any other work in the University of Wisconsin-River Falls' Institutional Repository (MINDS@UW-River Falls project) does not mean that you give up your copyright. Authors who submit a work to the project retain all aspects of copyright, unless they explicitly give it away to a third party (such as a publisher). Please note that the Library is not asking for control of an authors' copyright nor is the Library seeking to publish a work in place of a traditional publisher. Instead, the Library is asking permission to archive and display all scholarly material produced by the University's faculty, staff and students. Chalmer Davee Library seeks permission from all authors of a given work before making the item available in the Institutional Repository by sending the author(s) a non-exclusive grant of permission form. This form asks the author for permission to digitize and distribute the author’s work for nonprofit, educational purposes via the Internet or successive technologies. If the work has multiple authors, the Library asks permission from all parties involved and will not post a work in the Repository unless all authors have given permission. Any one of the authors of a particular work have the right to refuse inclusion of a work in the repository. The Library retains all copyright permission forms. Additionally, attached to every item in the Repository is a Creative Commons License which informs the viewer of the copyright rights of the author in that the viewer cannot copy, alter, transform, or build upon the work nor can the viewer use the work for commercial purposes. If you have questions on copyright, please contact Heidi Southworth at: heidi.southworth@uwrf.edu.
Some authors may be concerned that depositing their work in the repository may violate copyright agreements that they have with a commercial publisher. While some publishers deny the rights of authors to post articles on personal pages or non-commercial web sites, such as an Institutional Repository, there are some who allow authors to post articles online with certain restrictions. Visit the SHERPA-RoMEO site at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php to find out if your publisher allows articles to be posted online.
Moreover, you can consider adding an Author Addendum to a publisher's agreement before your article is published. An author addendum allows authors to retain certain rights, such as the right to post an article in a institutional repository. There are several organizations that have infromation on author rights. SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, has information on the author addendum and the rights of authors at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/index.html. Additionally, the Scholar's Copyright Project, from Science Commons, has a wealth of information and 4 versions of Author Addendum located at: http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/index.html and it has just added the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine (SCAE) to assist you in working with the addendum.
For additional information on your rights as authors, check out our informational brochure or contact Heidi Southworth at heidi.southworth@uwrf.edu.
Additional Articles are available at:
- Andrew, Theo. "Trends in Self-Posting of Research Material Online by Academic Staff." Ariadne 37 (2003). Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue37/andrew/ (Accessed: 20 February 2007).
- Bennett, Scott. 1999. "Authors' Rights." Journal of Electronic Publishing Volume 5, Issue 2 (December 1999). Available at: http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/05-02/bennett.html (Accessed: 31 March 2006).
- Frankel, Mark S. "Seizing the Moment: Scientists' Authorship Rights in the Digital Age." Report of a Study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (July 2002). Available at: http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/epub/finalrept.html (Accessed: 8 September 2006).
- Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences on February 12, 2008 approved a measure to give the University a worldwide license to make each faculty member's scholarly articles available and to exercise the copyright in the articles, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit. Harvard will take advantage of the license by hosting FAS faculty's scholarly articles in an open access repository, making them available worldwide for free. The faculty member will retain the copyright in the article, subject to the University's license. For more on this historic announcment, see the news release at: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/news_and_events/releases/scholarly_02122008.html
Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to open access. For more information on this event, see the news release at: http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07_openaccess.php
- Hirtle, Peter B. "Author Addenda: An Examination of Five Alternatives." D-Lib Magazine Volume 12, No. 11 (November 2006). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november06/hirtle/11hirtle.html (Accessed: 15 December 2006).
- Nguyen, Thinh. "Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors can do to Ensure Open Access to their Work through their Institution." SPARC/SCIENCE COMMONS WHITE PAPER (April 2008). Available online at: http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/guides/opendoors_v1.shtml (Accessed: 30 April 2008).
- Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. "Control Your Copyright." Available at: http://oscp.library.wisc.edu/take_action.html#copyright (Accessed: 1 June 2007).
- OhioLINK Library Community Recommendations on Retention of Intellectual Property Rights for Works Produced by Ohio Faculty and Students. Available at: http://www.ohiolink.edu/journalcrisis/intellproprecsaug06.pdf (Accessed: 20 February 2007).
- Swan, Alma P. and Sheridan N. Brown. "JISC/OSI Journal Authors' Survey Report." Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf (Accessed: 15 March 2006).
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