Copyright Retention for Researchers

Copyright is an important aspect of the research publication process and one that cannot be ignored when negotiating publishing contracts. Open access to research is becoming a critically important part of the scholarly communication landscape, and federal funding may even require that you deposit a funded publication in an open access forum like PubMed Central or an institutional repository like SOAR@USA. 

Unless you transfer your rights through a publishing contract, you have strong control of the use of your work. This guide will help you understand your rights as a content creator so that you can make more informed decisions in the publication of your scholarly research. We will also review a number of tools to empower you to share your work while controlling its use and offer some tips in negotiating your author rights with publishers.

US copyright law guarantees to the creator of a work a number of exclusive rights, including the right to:

• Reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords
• Prepare derivative works based upon the work
• Distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending
• Perform the work publicly if it is a literary, musical, dramatic, or choreographic work; a pantomime; or a motion picture or other audiovisual work
• Display the work publicly if it is a literary, musical, dramatic, or choreographic work; a pantomime; or a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. (This right also applies to the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work.)
• Perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission if the work is a sound recording

In order to qualify for copyright protection, the work does not need to be registered with the US Copyright Office, and it does not need to have been published. A work automatically qualifies for copyright protection once it has been fixed in a tangible medium. This includes digital copies and hand-written manuscripts.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that helps researchers and creators share their work with others while still keeping some rights. By choosing a Creative Commons license, you can decide how people are allowed to use your work—whether they can copy it, share it, change it, or use it for commercial purposes. These licenses make it easier for others to build on your research while making sure you still get credit and stay in control of how your work is used.

The SPARC Author Addendum is a simple legal tool that helps authors keep more rights to their research articles when publishing in journals. Instead of giving all rights to the publisher, the addendum lets you keep important rights—like the ability to share your article online, use it in teaching, or reuse parts of it in future work. You attach the addendum to your publisher agreement to make sure you retain these rights and increase access to your research.