Scholarly Communication and You: Author Rights & Copyrights

Before you sign your publisher's contract:

• Learn about your rights by visiting the SPARC author rights site.
• Research your publisher's policies through the SHERPA RoMEO's Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving site, which maintains a searchable list of publishers' policies.
• Use the SPARC Author Addendum when you sign your publishing agreement.
• See the resources offered by Creative Commons , a non-profit organization, which "provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry."
• Read about Open Science, a project of Creative Commons, which works on licensing, copyright, and open access issues in science publishing.
• A new book "Copyright for the Rest of Us: a guide for people who aren't lawyers" is available open access.  By Marcia Keyser of Drake University.

Other helpful sites about copyright:

• Bowdoin College's Copyright website.
• The United States Copyright Office for information from the government on copyright.
• Stanford University Libraries maintains a website on Copyright and Fair Use, with helpful information on educational issues.
• Earlham's  Copyright Policy website provides a useful overview of copyright issues and concerns. 
• When deciding if you need to seek permission to use material, University of Texas has a Getting Permission site.