ACRL/ARL/SPARC Web cast: Understanding Author Rights

This one hour webcast is designed to help librarians better engage disciplinary faculty and researchers on the topic of author rights. Learn the basic issues and understand outreach strategies.

The SPARC-ACRL Forum on Author Rights

Now available via SPARC podcast, this forum offers perspectives on copyright from a librarian, publisher, and an attorney – and is a great introduction to the topic of author rights. Michael Carroll’s talk from the attorney perspective, for example, makes clear that “as soon as the author’s finished typing, federal law showers down upon the author a set of exclusive rights…the author does not transfer any exclusive rights until the author signs a document.”

Introduction to Copyright Resources

Practical guidance when submitting journal articles.

Know Your Copy Rights - What you CAN do

Among the topics covered in the brochure are: fair use, the advantage of linking to instead of copying works, and special provisions for displaying or performing works in classes.

Campus and Regional Initiatives

Institutions and organizations across the world are leading initiatives to inform authors in all disciplines about their rights and how to retain them. A sample is presented here.

Detailed information for NIH-funded researchers

The U.S. National Institutes of Health currently requests that NIH-funded researchers deposit a copy of manuscripts stemming from their research into PubMed Central, within twelve months of the article's publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Alternative Publishing Options

As an author, you have the power not only to retain rights to distribute your work, but also to choose a publication that will support its widespread distribution. Consider Alternative Publishing Options available here, as well as the list of SPARC Partners when you next seek to publish an article.

Create Change

The new Create Change Web site (http://www.createchange.org), revised in June 2006, is based around the idea that the ways faculty share and use academic research results are changing rapidly and irreversibly. By posing the question, “Shouldn’t the way we share research be as advanced as the Internet?” the site outlines how faster and wider sharing of journal articles, research data, simulations, syntheses, analyses, and other findings fuels the advance of knowledge. It also offers practical ways faculty can look out for their own interests as researchers.

Also consult these helpful resources for authors:

• Your campus library. Librarians have been leaders in the movement for expanded sharing of scholarship. Meet with your department's liaison in the library to get the facts behind scholarly communication issues.
• Read and share the brochures on scholarly communication topics made available by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and SPARC.
• Visit the ARL scholarly communications web page and the Association of College and Research Libraries' Scholarly Communication Toolkit.