Open Access Scholarly Materials Guide: Author Rights

The SPARC Author Addendum page states:

"The author is the copyright holder. As the author of a work you are the copyright holder unless and until you transfer the copyright to someone else in a signed agreement.  Assigning your rights matters...  An author who has transferred copyright without retaining these rights must ask permission unless the use is one of the statutory exemptions in copyright law." 

It is also important to note that "[t]ransferring copyright doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The law allows you to transfer copyright while holding back rights for yourself and others."

A panel discussion about how authors can manage the copyright of their scholarly works.

How to find out a journal's copyright policies and the author's rights:

• Refer to the journal's publishing or copyright transfer agreement
• Look up the journal's copyright policies using Sherpa Services
• Search for the journal's policies on its Web site

A discussion of issues and strategies for securing publishing agreements that respect your scholarly works.

Authors Alliance was founded in 2014 to raise awareness of authors' rights and to "promotes authorship for the public good."  It focuses its efforts on four issues:

1. Managing authors' rights
2. Authorship law & policy
3. Reaching audiences
4. Authorial reputation & integrity

It offers an FAQ (circa 2014) on the basics of authorship and ownership under U.S. copyright law.  It has also released a document with proposed principles for copyright reform. 

Below are the latest posts on the Authors Alliance Blog: