Copyright

From IR Wiki

1 Suggestions: Copyright and publishing an item on SUNScholar
2 Creative Commons Licences
3 Copyright and Intellectual Property at the Stellenbosch University
4 What is Copyright?
5 Copyright Initiatives in South Africa
6 Copyright Mailing Lists
7 Useful Links

[edit] Suggestions: Copyright and publishing an item on SUNScholar

1. Include a clause in the letter of agreement with the publisher that allows you to archive a copy of the item on SUNScholar, whether it is a research article, a conference paper, a media broadcast, etc. Negotiate in advance, and obtain a digital copy of the final version from the publisher/ copyright owner. Submit this digital copy to SUNScholar for long-term digital preservation and access.

2. Don't just sign your copyright away. Licence your work by selecting a Creative Commons licence, or publish in an Open Access Journal. See Directory of Open Access Journals.

3. Check the publisher's policy for self-archiving within an institutional repository on SHERPA/ RoMEO Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving. Encourage publishers to post their policies at Suggest a Publisher.

4. Visit the publisher's web page for policies on self-archiving within SUNScholar.

5. Obtain permission for archiving the item on SUNScholar from the copyright owner/ publisher by contacting them directly. A copy of each letter of consent will be archived on SUNScholar.

Example letters to request permission:

Post-print article File:Postprints.pdf
Chapter from book File:Chapters.pdf
Video/ Sound Clip File:Video.pdf
Conference Paper File:Conference.pdf

[edit] Creative Commons Licences

See: http://scholars.sciencecommons.org

Creative Commons offers a range of licences that creators can use to manage their copyright in the online environment, each offering it’s own specific protections and freedoms. With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only under the conditions you specify. Licence your work by selecting a licence.

[edit] Copyright and Intellectual Property at the Stellenbosch University

Inquiries: InnovUS

[edit] What is Copyright?

According to DALRO "copyright is a branch of intellectual property which grants authors of works qualifying for copyright protection a number of exclusive rights." "Copyright protection grants the creators of works of the intellect certain legal rights over their works. These rights are both economic and moral: economic rights allow authors to profit from their work, while moral rights allow them to protect the integrity of what they create.

Copyright regulates what others may do to the owner’s intellectual property. Since the underlying principle is to protect the right of authors to be acknowledged as creators and to receive remuneration for their work, only the author may do, or authorise another person to do, certain acts in relation to the work:

reproduce it in any manner or form
publish it
perform it in public
cause it to be transmitted in a diffusion service
adapt it

If you want to perform one of these acts you need to request a licence to do so from the copyright owner or administrator. The copyright owner is not obliged to grant a licence.

For example, as the creator of a piece of writing you have property rights over it, as you have rights over all your property. Your intellectual property, however, is intangible, unlike your physical property. It is important to separate the physical object from the intangible object contained in it: you may own a book, having bought it in a bookshop, but unless you wrote it yourself you do not own its contents, the expression of ideas as printed on the page. While you may keep, sell, give away or destroy the physical object you are not at liberty to treat the copyright protected material contained therein as if it belonged to you." (Source)

Also see:

[edit] Copyright Initiatives in South Africa

ACA2K - The African Copyright & Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) Project is probing the relationship between national copyright environments and access to knowledge in African countries. The project is probing this relationship within an access to knowledge (A2K) framework - a framework which regards the protection/promotion of user access as one of the central objectives of copyright law. Access the ACA2K South African Research Report August 2009.