Staff Copyright Guide

When submitting an article for publication in an academic journal, or a book or book chapter, you will be required to sign a contract laying out the terms of the publication agreement between yourself as author and the publisher. These contracts are obviously legally binding, and it is therefore important you know what you have agreed to prior to uploading any material to UDORA.

A good place to check publisher policies relating to archiving of articles in an institutional repository such as UDORA is Sherpa Romeo. This database was designed for this specific purpose. 

Please see our getting published guide and the contracts and copyright tab for guidance on publisher contracts for further guidance. 

In most cases you will be required to assign the copyright to the publisher. This means they own the copyright to your article for the duration of the copyright term - currently 70 years from the death of the author.

As the copyright owner, the publisher alone may do the following:

• Copy the work.
• Provide copies to the public.
• Perform, show or play the work.
• Broadcast the work.
• Adapt the work.
• Rent or lend the work.

For you to do any of the above, permission must be sought from the copyright holder. Your moral rights, i.e. the right to be identified as the author, are not infringed, but it is important to recognise that you no longer hold the copyright to your work.

Occasionally a contract may specify a licence to publish instead of assignment. This means that you are granting the publisher a worldwide, exclusive licence to publish your article but you retain the copyright. As this contract grants the publisher the sole right to publish your work, you would still need to seek permission to upload your article to UDORA, as this would class as publishing the work, given the Open Access nature of UDORA.

Most publishers prefer to be assigned copyright of the work, as this removes all ambiguity as regards ownerships, and allows the publishers to negotiate subsidiary licences or to act in cases of copyright infringement or plagiarism. Unless of course you have published your work Open Access and under a CC-BY license. With Open Access, the author typically retains copyright.