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Copyright: Copyright for Creators

A guide for students and instructors. This guide is not intended to be legal advice. It was not created by lawyers. It is designed to provide general information about copyright and intellectual property.

Publishing Your Work

Image of webpage with publish buttonThis page provides basic information on your rights under the U.S. Copyright Law and resources for contract negotiations with publishers.

The information on this page is not legal advice. For contract negotiations and concerns, consult with a legal advisor.

Managing Your Copyrighted Works

As soon as you write down your work, it becomes copyrighted to you — you own what you have written.

In the United States, authors of a work have the exclusive right to:

  • to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords
  • to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work
  • to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
  • in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly
  • in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
  • in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Not all of these rights pertain directly to scholarly works, but it's important to note that artistic works are protected under copyright, too.

When you are publishing your research in a scholarly journal, you will likely need to sign a contract with the publisher outlining who will control the copyrights. In some cases, the publisher may want to take all of your rights, while in true open access journals, they may only ask for the right to publish your article first. Below, you will find information about what rights you have as an author and how to protect them.

Although your work is copyrighted to you by default, there are ways to share them through Creative Commons licenses or registering your work with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Creative Commons licenses provide a standardized way to grant copyright permissions. You can select from one of the following attributions and place it on your work. See the Creative Commons tab to learn more about how you can share your work through Creative Commons.

CC Attribution onlyCreative Commons Attribution Share AlikeCreative Commons Attribution No DerivativesCreative Commons Attribution NonCommercialCreative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share AlikeCreative Commons Attribution NonCommerical No Derivatives

To figure out which license to use, see https://creativecommons.org/choose/

Although you have exclusive copyright to your works automatically, you may want to register a copyright for further protection. For additional information on the types of works that can be registered and to register your work with the U.S. Copyright office, see https://copyright.gov/registration/ 

Publishing Your Work

Note: These definitions come from Inefuku, Harrison W., "Pre-Print, Post-Print or Offprint? A guide to publication versions, permissions and the digital repository" (2013). Digital Repository Outreach and Workshops. 2. http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/digirep_outreach/2

Pre-Print: "The pre-print is the author’s manuscript version of the publication that has been submitted to a journal for consideration for publication. If published in a peer-reviewed publication, the pre-print does not reflect any revisions made during the peer-review process. It also does not reflect any layout or copy editing done by the publisher in preparation for publication. Because the pre-print is produced by the author, it is typically a DOC (or other word processing file format) or Tex format."

Post-Print: "The post-print is the author’s final manuscript of the publication, which is submitted to the publisher for publication. If published in a peerreviewed publication, the post-print contains all revisions made during the peer-review process. It does not, however, reflect any layout or copy editing done by the publisher in preparation for publication. As such, proofs and offprints delivered to the author from the publisher are not post-prints. Because the post-print is produced by the author, it is typically a DOC (or other word processing file format) or Tex format."

Published Version: "The published version is the final version of the article produced by the publisher. When dealing with hard-copy publications, this is the printed version found in books, proceedings and journals. In the digital environment, the published version is usually a PDF available through the publisher’s Web site or through article databases (although for some online publications, the published version may be in HTML or other file formats)."

SHERPA/RoMEO is a great tool for checking publishers' copyright policies and whether they allow self-archiving (i.e., depositing your work in an institutional repository like Touro Scholar). SHERPA/RoMEO uses a color-coded system to show how restrictive a journal is, with green being the least restrictive (allowing for archiving of pre-print, post-print, or the publisher's edition).

sherpa romeo color code explained

While it is challenging to change a contract you have already signed, you can add an addendum to contracts you haven't yet signed. An addendum is a way to modify the copyright terms in your authors' agreement to make them more flexible when it comes to self-archiving and retaining ownership of your own work.

The links below provide more information about how to change a publishing contract.