Scholarly Communication

Publishing is important to many disciplines. Before you sign a contract with a publisher, you must make sure that you understand the terms of the contract and that they will allow you to use your work in your pedagogy. Publishing your research requires some thought about copyright and an author's responsibility. What are your rights as the creator of the content? Do you have rights to the intellectual property? What are those rights? If you give your copyright to a publisher, you will be limited by "Fair Use" when using your work in the future. 

Traditionally, academic publishers have required that authors transfer copyright to them, but this is changing. More and more campuses are creating Open Access mandates that require authors to retain some rights to their work. The assignment of "non-exclusive" rights is becoming much more common. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition has information for authors on retaining certain rights, including an Author Addendum  generator.  Science Commons also has the The Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine. These sites will help you generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights. You can use this form to negotiate to retain the copyright to your work, or to include it in ScholarWorks, the CSU-wide repository for sharing research. If you would like assistance in negotiating to retain your copyright, license your research with a Creative Comons license, or to explore other options, please contact Carmen Mitchell.

CSUSM has an Intellectual Property Policy that faculty, staff, and students can refer to for more information on the campus. The first purpose of this intellectual property policy is to provide the necessary protections and incentives to encourage both the discovery and development of new knowledge, its transfer for the public benefit and its use for development of the economy.