Copyright for Authors

Author's Rights

Digital distribution and changes in the law are transforming the way that scholars share their work. The OKC offers legal guidance to help you understand the issues and to support your publication decisions.

We also offer more information about publication agreements, the central legal instrument in the academic world and specific issues such as rights reversion for scholarly monographs.

Protect Your Rights and Promote Your Work

Protect your right to use your own work

The OKC provides tools and expertise that can help you negotiate the legal and policy issues surrounding your publication decisions. The SPARC addendum can be added to any contract to retain specific rights. You can also schedule a consultation to review your publication agreement and consider specific language to address your needs as an author.

Open Access: help your work be read and cited more often

Many authors also choose to make their work available without restriction by making it "open access" (OA). Although OA is a relatively new practice a scholarly consensus is already developing that OA publication has a readership and citation advantage. If you are interested in making your scholarship open access you can schedule a consultation to discuss OA publication options.

Help you negotiate ownership issues surrounding joint authorship, faculty-student collaboration, and institutional shop rights

The OKC is here to help you understand rights issues and to adjudicate disputes about ownership. If you have questions about ownership at any point you can also contact the OKC.

Read more about publishing in the Publishing at NCSU FAQ.

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