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Sharing Your Research

The guide is to educate graduate students and early career research on publishing, copyright, and impact metrics.

Copyright and Your Rights

Are you planning to publish your thesis or dissertation as an article? That's great! It allows you to establish yourself as a researcher and share your important work - but be careful with the publishing agreements you sign.

Your publishing agreement may be restrictive and not permit you to include your article in your dissertation. 

Your Author Rights

You know what you write, but do you know your rights?

  • You own what you create. As the author of a work you are automatically the copyright holder. Copyright registration is not required.
  • You retain your copyright unless you transfer the copyright to someone else in a signed agreement, such as a journal publisher.
  • The copyright holder controls the work. 
  • Transferring copyright doesn't have to be "all or nothing."
  • Your assignment of rights to publishers could hinder your future uses of your work.

Copyright

Copyright law protects creative works. Examples of types of works protected by copyright law include books, journal articles, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, audio & visual recordings, and software programs.

Within copyright you have five rights: the right to reproduce copies, make derivative works, distribute copies, and perform or display the work publicly

Publisher Policies

Below are links to the general copyright and archiving policies for major publishers. If your publisher is not included in this list you can look them up in the Sherpa/Romeo database, or consult the publisher's website.