Copyright at MIT: Publishing

• You have exclusive rights under the Copyright Act to publish and communicate your work
• Be aware of your responsibilities
• Protect your work

It is a good idea to add a copyright statement to your work e.g.

© 2012 John Smith

or a copyright notice

This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), no part may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of (name and address of copyright owner and the year in which the work was made).

(see Australian Government Intellectual Property Manual, p. 89)

Text documents on a PC

• Ctrl + Alt + C
• Under the Insert tab, click on Symbol and then select the Copyright symbol

Text documents on a Mac

• Option + g

(Tips from The Copyright Symbol Webpage)

Copyright can be assigned, licensed, given away, sold, left by will, or passed on like any other property. (See A short guide to copyright, p. 21-22)

Assigning copyright is done in writing and this often happens in publishing agreements (such as when a journal publishes an article you have written). Copyright is also frequently assigned in funding agreements. Therefore do not sign any agreements unless you are fully aware of the copyright implications. 

Licensing grants specified rights to the licensee. For example, with a conference paper, the copyright is normally licensed to the conference organisers so that they can reproduce the paper.

When publishing your research, check the terms of your publishing agreement for restrictions such as:

• Can you still use your research materials in teaching, conference presentations and lectures?
• Can you use them for other scholarly works or professional activities?
• Can you place a version or an abstract of your research material in the UC Research Repository?

If you are not comfortable with the terms of your publishing agreement, then consider requesting that an author addendum or written permission from the publisher to use your research for a particular purpose.

Open access (OA) is a relatively new model of scholarly communication. It has the benefit of allowing "instant worldwide visibility" for your research work.

There are 2 options:

• "Green" OA - involves self-archiving e.g. in university repository (see UC Research Repository box on this page) or some other central repository.
• "Gold" OA - publishing in open access journals i.e. "journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access" (DOAJ).

(see Ways to provide open access to your work, "Gold" open access publishing)