Webinar number two of the day was a workshop “The Fault in Our Publication Agreements: Avoiding Thesis/Dissertation Copyright Tragedies.” It was a good talk by copyright librarian Nancy Sims of the UMN Libraries.
Takeaways from today’s talk:
-copyright happens automagically at the moment of fixation/creation/write it down
-any creative work is copyrightable
-no one can own – ideas/facts/data/discovery are not ownable (such as E=Mc2, unless you can patton it) because they are so valuable we want everyone to think about them and and use them
-most publishers act as though this is copyrightable
-joint authorship can affect your copyright, as if you create it on work time
-contacts affect your copyright
-you can sign away your rights, publishers do need some rights, sometimes the contract is fine, non-exclusive rights, you can negotiate, can’t negotiate after you click agree
-beware on a click-thrus agreement
-you and publisher can share rights
-https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ publisher policy site
-director of open access journals https://doaj.org/