Protecting Intellectual Property

Awareness concerning intellectual property rights is an increasingly important issue for faculty and researchers. This is perhaps most profoundly felt in academia in regards to publishing and disseminating research. Managing one's intellectual output through the transferal and retention of copyrights is a key to reshaping scholarly communication. It is important for faculty to know how to balance their interests and the academy's interests with the interests of publishers. The transfer of copyrights can confer advantages to publishers, perhaps to the author's and the institution's disadvantage. By managing the rights one retains and those one transfers, faculty can maximize the dissemination, use, and impact of their work.

Scholarly Communication

• New Horizons in Scholarly Communication
• Recommended Principles for Contracts Covering Online Book Publishing - National Writers Union
• Statement of Principles on Contracts between Writers and Electronic Book Publishers - National Writers Union
• Create Change: Supporting faculty and librarian action in scholarly communication
  Developed by ARL (Association of Research Libraries), this site adeptly summarizes the many challenges and issues facing faculty and librarians.
  
  • SPARC Open Access newsletter

Satisfy Your Copyright Needs and Protect Your Intellectual Property

• What is Intellectual Property? An excellent overview US Department of State which explains the patent process, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.
• Information About Patents
• University of Texas at Austin Office of Technology Commercialization
• SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access): Use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
• Copyright - UT System Intellectual Property Policy
  • Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE - Copyright, Intellectual Property Rights, and Licensing Issues
  • CopyOwn- A Resource on Copyright Ownership for the Higher Education Community
  • Cornell University Legal Information Institute
  • Franklin Pierce Law Center - Intellectual Property Mall
  • University of Houston Law Center, Institute for Intellectual Property and Information Law
  • University of Iowa -- Copyright and Multimedia Law for Webbuilders and Multimedia Authors
  • University of Maryland University College (UMUC), Center for Intellectual Property
  • University of San Francisco Intellectual Property Law Association
  • University of Texas System -- Copyright Law in Cyberspace
  • Yale University -- Copyright Resources Online
• Contact Lexie Thompson-Young, Digital Library Services Division of the University of Texas Libraries
  (atyoung@mail.utexas.edu or 512-495-4251)

What You Can Do to Protect your Intellectual Property

As faculty and researchers you have enormous influence as authors and editors. Here's a list of some things you can do to maximize the reach and impact of your research, reduce access barriers, retain control and protection of your scholarship and intellectual property.

• Manage your intellectual property: Increase your freedom and flexibility to use your work for teaching, learning, and research. Reserve some or all rights to copy or republish, and transfer only those rights to the publisher that they need to conduct their business.
• Use alternative, and when allowable, multiple forms of publishing
  • Open Access Journals: New modes of scholarly publication have been developed and are being developed. There are now more than 1,000 open access journals that are focused on increasing dissemination and are experimenting with new business models -- see the directory of open access journals.
  • Deposit of digital research results into online research repositories. Disciplinary communities and institutions have created online repositories for research results. Many departments on the University of Texas campus have their own.
  • Publishers who are experimenting with alternatives. Browse through University of California's Office of Scholarly Cummunications's news and issues to see announcements about experiments from a variety of other publishers.
  • Competitors to commercially published journals. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) exists to foster such competition. View a list of some SPARC-supported journals currently in publication.
• Support sustainable scholarly communication: Consider submitting papers to quality journals that have reasonable pricing practices; examine the pricing, copyright, and licensing agreements of any commercially published journal you contribute to; or refuse to review for unreasonably expensive journals or to serve on their editorial boards.