Publishing Your Research

When you publish work, you want to make sure that you fully understand what will happen to the copyright of your work. According to copyright.gov, copyright is "a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression." Once you create a work, you are automatically the copyright owner. However, sometimes publishers will require copyright ownership in publication agreements. The most important thing is that you are fully aware of what will happen to your rights once your work is published. 

• Will you remain the sole copyright holder over your research?
• Will you be required to give the publisher copyright over your published work?
• What license will be work be published under?
  • Will the same license apply to my written work AND my research data?

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are public copyright licenses that allow you to add reasonable restrictions to others' use of your work. It is important to remember that copyright is automatically granted. Adding CC licenses will allow you tell consumers of your work exactly how you would like them to interact with your work. 

You will see CC licenses made up of the following elements (or "restrictions"):

• BY (attribution) - credit must be given to the creator
• SA (share-alike) - adaptations must be shared under the same terms
• NC (non-commercial) - only non-commercial uses of the work are permitted
• ND (non-derivative) - no derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

There are 6 main CC licenses, as well as CC0 which means the work is in the public domain. They are listed here from most permissive to least permissive:

It is important to note two things about licensing your work:

• Once you apply a license to your work, it cannot be revoked
• Only the copyright holder or someone with express permission from the copyright holder can apply a license

Your manuscript will go through multiple versions as it moves through the publication process. Your sharing rights and copyrights may change depending on the version of your manuscript you would like to share. Your decision to publish OA or traditionally may also have an effect on these rights. 

Typically, your manuscript will go through three main versions:

1. Preprint
   • A work in progress. This is the version you will submit to a journal to be published.
2. Postprint
   • Author accepted manuscript. This version has been accepted by the publisher and has undergone any peer-review processing.
3. Published
   • The version of record. This version is the final published article, including all formatting. This is the version that gets a DOI.

Image: Thomas Shafee, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons