Copyright for Creators

Am I a copyright owner?  

Have you written a book or journal article? Or perhaps a paper for class? Maybe you just finished a set of slides for an upcoming presentation. Or perhaps you took a photograph of your new puppy. If so, you are a copyright owner.

Copyright protects expression, and protection begins the instant you record it. The recording could be on a hard drive, on paper, on canvas, or it could be an audio or video recording. The original creator of the work is the copyright holder. 

Do I need to register my work with the U.S. Copyright Office?  

In short, no. You don’t need to register your work to enjoy copyright protection. However, registration does give you some legal benefits, including allowing you to sue another party if they infringe your copyrights, so it's worth considering. The U.S. Copyright Office provides help through their Copyright Registration Toolkit and a frequently asked questions webpage. 

What happens to my rights when I publish?  

When you publish a book or article, you sign an author agreement (aka publication contract) that you should read carefully. Some publishers require you to fully transfer your copyright to them in these agreements. Once signed, this type of agreement makes the publisher the copyright owner, and you no longer control the exclusive rights to your work and must consult the publisher if you want to reuse it. 

Many publishers are becoming more friendly toward author rights, in part due to funder mandates for open access such as federal policies and regulations concerning public access to the results of federally funded research. 

Examples of friendly agreements      

Publishing open access (OA) is becoming more and more common (also due to funder mandates in many cases), and we have more information available on the topic. 

This sample contract for an OA article from Wiley makes it clear that the authors retain copyright and give a nonexclusive license (i.e., permission) to Wiley to distribute their work (see clauses B and C on page 2) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). A nonexclusive license means that the authors can give the same license to another entity, so this license is more friendly to authors.

Public Library of Science (PLoS) attaches a CC-BY 4.0 license to all the articles it publishes. The author retains copyright in their work while readers of PLoS may reuse the content without getting permission if they provide attribution.

Be careful!

As noted earlier, it's important to read your publishing contract very carefully. Some publishers allow authors to keep their copyright but require them to give exclusive publishing rights to the publisher, which means the authors cannot grant these same rights to another entity, so these terms are more restrictive than those described just above. Find more info from cOAlition S and Authors Alliance.

What if my publisher wants me to transfer my copyright to them?

If this is the case, do not fear! Publication agreements are negotiable.

If you are publishing a book, you can negotiate the terms of your agreement directly with the publisher. However, journal article publishing agreements may be a bit harder to negotiate, and often the agreement is part of a click-through form that cannot be edited. Not sure what you should be looking for in your agreement or contract? Or do you have a contract but are hesitant to sign it because you don't understand all the terms? The Emory Scholarly Communications Office is happy to consult with you to help you understand your publisher's terms and whether they are outside the norm for scholarly publishing.

What if I'm not going to formally publish my work but want to share it online and proactively allow others to reuse it?

In this case, you are still the copyright owner and can put an open license on your work, such as a Creative Commons license (for computer code, you'd probably want to use a specific license made for code). Doing so will signal to downstream users that you want your work to be bread, shared, and reused. This short video should help you understand more about Creative Commons.