IUScholarWorks Repository- Copyright and Licensing FAQ

 

Who owns the copyright for scholarly materials at Indiana University?

In general, authors (faculty, students, staff,) at IU own the rights to their traditional works of scholarship unless they have given those rights in writing to another party or have produced the work under a grant that required some other distribution of rights. According to the Indiana University Policy on Intellectual Property, traditional works of scholarship are defined as:

 

(a)     works of scholarship, other than software;

(b)    by faculty or students;

(c)     that reflect research or creativity;

(d)    which, within the University, are considered as evidence of professional advancement or accomplishment; and

(e)     that have not been the subject of exceptional University support or external contracts or grants.

 

Examples of Traditional Works of Scholarship include scholarly publications, journal articles, research bulletins, monographs, books, plays, poems, and works of music and art. Traditional Works of Scholarship do not include software.

 

What rights do I give to Indiana University when I submit my materials to the IUScholarWorks Repository?

In order to place your work(s) in the IUScholarWorks Repository and make them openly available on the web, you must agree to the IUScholarWorks Repository limited, non-exclusive license, which:

 

- confirms that you own the copyright to the items

- grants Indiana University permission to distribute the items worldwide and to take the necessary steps to preserve them.

 

Under this agreement between you and Indiana University, you retain all rights you had to these items before they were deposited, such as making copies available on other web sites or publishing them in the same form or in a revised form, without obtaining permission from Indiana University.

 

NOTE: The permission you grant to Indiana University by accepting this license is non-revocable; once granted, copyright holders cannot rescind their permission for Indiana University to distribute and preserve these works.

 

If you submit your own work to the IUScholarWorks Repository, you will be required to agree to the IUScholarWorks Repository license as part of the submission process. If the libraries or someone else will be submitting material on your behalf, you must grant permission using the IUScholarWorks Repository License and Permission Form for Mediated Submissions.

 

Read the IUScholarWorks license

 

What about works with multiple authors?

Co-authors who wish to submit materials to the IUScholarWorks Repository must have permission from other copyright holders to do so.

 

What rights do readers of IUScholarWorks Repository documents have?

By default, materials deposited into the IUScholarWorks Repository are open access, which means anyone on the web can access them. Also by default, all materials stored in the IUScholarWorks Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved by the copyright holder. As an alternative to reserving all rights, authors are encouraged to consider licensing their works under a Creative Commons License, under which they can preserve those rights that are most important to them (e.g., proper attribution,) and at the same time explicitly grant to readers certain other rights chosen by the author to be used at the readers discretion (e.g., copy, distribute, display, or perform the work.) Documents in the IUScholarWorks Repository that are licensed under Creative Commons licenses will display the license conditions.

 

Copyright guidelines for frequently-deposited materials in the IUScholarWorks Repository

 

Published works (postprints)

Authors often want to provide open access to their articles that have been reviewed, revised and accepted for publication in scholarly journals or other published formats. Many publishers do grant their authors such rights, but policies vary widely. Authors should check with their publishers to see if the author copyright agreement allows the author to post the article in a local open-access repository. The RoMEO Project (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) has compiled a list of many journals' copyright policies about self-archiving. If the publisher has not granted that right to the author in the standard author agreement, authors are encouraged to contact their publisher and request permission to do so.

 

For future agreements, authors are encouraged to understand their rights as authors and to consider retaining some of them. An easy-to-use author addendum at the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Create Change site helps authors negotiate with publishers for those rights.

 

Preprints (draft papers that have not been submitted for publication)

In some disciplines, authors routinely submit draft papers to preprint repositories or working paper series for review and feedback prior to submitting them for formal publication. Most of these preprint repositories are open-access, and authors retain the rights to deposit those works into the IUScholarWorks Repository. Authors who wish to deposit a pre-print into the Repository are advised to check pre-publication requirements of journals to which they may subsequently submit the work for formal publication. Some publishers may view such pre-print posting in open-access repositories as prior publication and will not publish the articles; others may require that preprints be removed upon publication in their journal.

 

Conference Papers, powerpoint presentations, etc.

In general, these are traditional works of scholarship, and unless transferred in writing to another entity, all rights remain with the author.

 

Works published/distributed by IU academic departments, research centers, etc.

Working paper series, research reports, conference proceedings, and other scholarly materials distributed by IU academic departments via their departmental web site or printed publications may be posted into the Repository with appropriate author permissions. It is best for departments to obtain the authors explicit permission to distribute the work through the IUScholarWorks Repository, but that requirement might be waived for materials that have been published prior to their deposition in the Repository under shared understandings that the departments would distribute or publish them. Please contact us to discuss.

 

Dissertations

IU students retain all rights to their dissertations. When they submit their dissertations to IU, they are asked to give UMI permission to distribute the dissertation via UMI subscriptions or individual sales. If they so choose, students may also give Indiana University permission to distribute their dissertation via the IUScholarWorks Repository. Contact us.

 

Undergraduate and graduate student papers and theses

In general, students retain all rights to the materials they produce at Indiana University, unless the material came from a grant-funded project or the student has - in writing - transmitted his/her copyright to another entity. Departments/units who would like to post student scholarship in the IUScholarWorks Repository must first obtain the students permission to distribute the material via the Repository, and should provide full disclosure to students about possible future publication restrictions if the paper has been posted in an open-access repository.