How does the UMass Open Access policy protect my rights to re-use my own papers?
Answer
The UMass OA policy has two major benefits to authors – one is “open access”, which helps authors gain more readers and helps readers learn about the author's work. The second major benefit is that it helps authors retain rights to their own work. A few examples:
Suppose you developed a cool new graphical model, took some photographs, or invested a lot of time in developing the perfect graphics and figures for your paper. Under traditional publishing agreements, when you assign your copyright to the publisher, you assign the copyright to those graphics and figures too. The only way you could preserve your rights to re-use those figures would be by individually negotiating your publishing agreement, or separately publishing those figures. The OA policy takes that burden away from authors! Instead, the author’s rights to re-use their own figures, graphics, and other works are automatically preserved. You can simply re-use, modify, or adapt your graphics and figures any way and any time you need. (Of course, you should always cite to the first publication.)
A second example might be when you want to use your whole paper, sharing it with students in a class or workshop, or colleagues at a meeting. As the author, the campus OA policy gives you the right to reproduce and distribute your own work. So even if your publisher asked you to transfer your copyright to the publisher, the campus OA policy reserved a set of rights that you can draw on.
A third example might be if you want to adapt or modify your paper, for instance to include as a chapter in a book or a white paper. Again, the campus OA policy protects your rights to re-use your own work – and that protection pre-exists, and survives, any contract you later sign with a publisher.
How do you take advantage of these rights? Faculty members and others covered by the UMass OA policy have it easy. First, you have to upload your work to the campus repository ScholarWorks, thus claiming the OA policy’s benefits.
Second – actually, there is no second step! Simply upload your work to ScholarWorks, and you have preserved all the legal rights to use your own work. (You should always add a cite to the original publication, as appropriate in your own discipline—but that’s professional practice, not copyright.)