UniSC Research Bank

What do I do about copyright?

Copyright ownership does not change hands when you place material in the repository and so will continue to be retained either by the author/s or the publisher. We are not asking you, nor would we want to encourage you, to transfer copyright to the repository.

However, we need to ensure the Library/Repository has the right to make your work available online and to do what is necessary with it to keep it accessible, such as migrate it to updated formats as that becomes necessary. Repository staff will not make material publicly available until we are confident we have the authorisation to do so. One of our jobs is to work with you to get it right.

When you contribute your work to UniSC Research Bank, we ask that you agree to the Author Deposit Agreement that allows us to include your work if you hold the copyright, or to seek permissions on your behalf if copyright is held by the publisher. We ask that you have the permission of your co-authors (if necessary) and any other people whose copyright is included in your work when you contribute to UniSC Research Bank.

Where the full version of your work cannot be included due to copyright restrictions, we can still include the citation details with a link to the full version on the publisher's website.

Doesn't the publisher own the copyright in my published works?

Some publishers, such as Elsevier and Springer, allow authors to deposit the pre-publication version of their article into a repository. Alternatively, we may be able to link to the published version on the publisher's website. The SHERPA RoMEO project provides a searchable database of publisher policies regarding repositories and is a good starting point.

For conferences, it is best to contact the publisher of the conference proceedings directly.

Digital Library Team staff can help you determine what your rights are and assist you to get the necessary clearance to put your paper into the repository.

What version of my research can I deposit?

This may depend on what the publisher allows. Publishers sometimes permit the last pre-publication version i.e. the text you send to the publisher, to be included in the repository, but it is always best to double-check your publisher's agreement. What you can't do is take the final published version - with all the formatting from the electronic version of a journal, and put that version in the repository - unless of course the publisher has authorised this.

There are three versions of a work that can be included in UniSC Research Bank:

• Published version – this is the version as it appears in the journal or proceedings, and if we can include this version, we can usually source it from the publisher.
• Postprint or Authors accepted version – this is the final text of an article once it has gone through the editorial and peer review process, but before proofreading and typesetting by the publisher.  If the publisher requires us to use this version, we will contact you to see if you have one available.
• Preprint or submitted version - this is the final draft of the article prior to submission to the publisher.

If you believe copyright work that is available on this site constitutes copyright infringement or a breach of an agreed licence or contract please notify the UniSC Copyright and Open Scholarship Officer using the Report an Infringement Form.

This form is designed for you to provide sufficient information for our investigation and response.

You may copy whole papers for your individual, personal non-commercial use subject to copyright laws of the country in which you reside, providing the material is properly attributed.

If the material is required for any other purpose, you should contact the author or publisher direct as requests of this nature are not processed through this repository.

1. The copyright of any material deposited in the UniSC Research Bank is retained by the copyright owner as per any publishing or copyright agreements.
2. The text may not be reproduced or communicated in print or electronic form for commercial purposes.
3. Readers may copy, download, print and save electronic copies of whole papers for their own personal, individual non-commercial use.
4. Attribution of authorship is essential. Excerpts, quotations and paraphrasing must be fully referenced.
5. The text may not be altered without the permission of the author.
6. UniSC reserves the right to remove content at any time.
7. Metadata can be harvested for the purposes of discovery of the archive's contents however harvesting the full-text document is not permitted.