Publish your work OA
- OA PublishersThis is an incomplete list of publishers that allow for work to be openly licensed. From Sherpa Romeo
- KnightScholarKnightScholar is a curated institutional repository for scholarly, creative, educational, and research works created by SUNY Geneseo faculty, staff, and students, and for digitized materials from Milne Library’s Special Collections and Archives.
Material in KnightScholar is Open Access.
Protecting Your Work
Authors actively looking to write or publish a manuscript need to understand copyright, licensing, and author rights.
Copyright law is complex and often convoluted. It is important to have a basic knowledge of its limitations for both creators and users. From the very moment of fixed creation, your work has copyright whether it is officially registered or not. Licenses are a way of stating exactly which rights you wish to keep or release.
Tradition has assumed the signing over of the author’s rights to gain access to the publishing process; however, this is no longer the case. The shifting landscape of scholarly publishing is creating new paradigms that allow content creators more say in how and when their creations can be used and presented. Authors should understand that the rights belong to them from the beginning and now have a precedent in negotiating these rights to their best advantage.
See the list of resources below, which will aid in your pre- and post-publication decisions regarding the protection of your original work.
Licensing your work for broader use
Authors who retain copyright can designate acceptable uses with Creative Commons licenses. These licenses clarify limitations and permissions for publication and use of your work.
- Creative Commons License GeneratorGenerate a license for sharing your work.
Author contracts and author rights
It is important to know what rights you retain to your work after publication: Are you able to share a copy of your manuscript with friends? Can you legally post a copy on your webpage? The website SHERPA/RoMEO records author rights information for journals and publishers, allowing you to find out what rights you will have before you even submit the manuscript.
- Author Rights RetentionAlthough they often ask for a transfer of a copyright, publishers require only the author’s permission to publish an article, not a wholesale transfer of copyright.
- Copyright as a SUNY EmployeeGenerally, faculty retain the copyright for their classroom materials, online instructional materials, and research publications (unless they transfer copyright during the publication process).
- Registering a WorkAlthough copyright is automatically granted from the moment of creation, registering your work with the Copyright Office conveys additional benefits and legal recourse in the case of copyright infringement.
- Self-archivingA comprehensive guide to self-archiving your work (publicly sharing a copy of your publication on a website).
- SHERPA/RoMEOUse this database of publishers to determine what rights you may retain to your work.
- SPARC Author’s AddendumAn addendum to include with your publication’s agreement to protect your rights as an author.
- Work for Hire (PDF)From the U.S. Copyright Office: Work for hire falls under different copyright law; the copyright typically is held by the employer, not the creator.
