Questions tagged [copyright]
Copyright issues: publication agreements, copyright transfer upon publication, legal status of work-for-hire in academia, etc.
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I'd like to use a figure from a paper; what's the best way to do this?
So, I've seen a really nice figure in a paper; what's the best way to 'get a copy'?
Will it be on the publisher's website?
Do I need to draw my own version?
Email the author?
And, finally, how does ...
88
votes
6
answers
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Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?
If I publish a pre-print paper on arXiv, how can I guarantee exclusive rights to the publisher afterwards? Am I unable to publish on non-open access journals after I publish a pre-print on arXiv ?
35
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6
answers
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How can I "time-stamp" my data without publishing it?
If I have a DB or set of data, and want to grant access to it to a limited group of experts in a field (not general access), and don't want others using it for their own publications, nor seeing the ...
28
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5
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Citing sources of problems in assignments
This question was raised by Dave Clarke here.
When a textbook author approaches a topic in a novel way or presents a particularly interesting example, I believe that a teacher who creates lecture ...
79
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9
answers
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Can I use images showing up in Google search for my presentation slides without violating any copyright?
I am teaching a freshman science course for the first time and I am doing also outreach activities in high schools. To be able to attract the young generation to science one has to connect the ...
47
votes
8
answers
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Can I publish the reviews I write?
This is a follow-up question to Open versus Blind reviewing process, and is somehow related to What happens to the reviews that people write for journal articles after they're sent back to the ...
40
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3
answers
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Is it necessary to obtain permissions for copying figures from published articles in your proposal/dissertation?
I am currently writing a proposal for my research topic and I want to copy figures from published articles into my proposal document. To put it in perspective, almost all the copied figures are to go ...
14
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2
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Academic fair use and using publication images in your thesis
In the introductory chapter of my thesis, I've been surveying the previous work in my field. As part of this, I've used images from some of those publications and included them as Figures in my own ...
14
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3
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Does a preprint include revisions made in response to peer review?
This is related to but not answered in this question about the difference between various stages of a manuscript in the publication process.
After an author has submitted a manuscript to a journal ...
6
votes
2
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What is the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement?
In this several times up-voted answer, it is suggested, among other things, that 'if someone using an image [...] that they do not own (it) is inappropriate and should be first reported to the PI of ...
53
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3
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Why does academia.edu reserve the right to sell, modify, and "exploit" my papers if I post them there?
In academia.edu's terms of service, it says
By making available any Member Content on or through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-...
42
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6
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Is it legal to add your publications to ResearchGate?
I recently created a profile on ResearchGate. And to add your publications list it requires you to upload the paper. Is it legal to upload published journal articles on public servers, where everyone ...
29
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4
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Co-authorship for not very involved supervisor
I have now completed my PhD by research.
I received support from my supervisor in the form of advice on my chapters (for which I am indebted to him; we have a very good working relationship).
The ...
24
votes
2
answers
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How much do figures need to differ to avoid copyright claims?
It sometimes arise that I need to use, for an article, a book chapter or any other written work, figures that I have already published (not figures published by others). These are usually schematic ...
20
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3
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Solution manual and copyright?
Recently, I have worked out a solution manual for a book.
I have not found on the Internet any existing complete solution manual for this book.
Since the solution manual of mine contains every ...
22
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5
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How tightly enforced are open-access embargoes?
Many academic journals have copyright policies which forbid authors (possibly for a finite embargo time) to make their papers (either preprints, accepted manuscripts, or camera-ready versions) freely ...
16
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3
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How to legally re-use images in paper and still continue to use and distribute them in slides?
I have created several figures that are a part of presentation slides. As usual for presentation slides, those were not published in any official proceedings (just the underlying paper, that didn't ...
12
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2
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I chose wrong license during submission on arXiv, what shall I do?
I am a PhD student from computer science and try to submit a paper to IEEE transactions. In addition, I also submitted it to arXiv under the CC0 license (Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication), ...
46
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8
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Why don't academics bypass restrictions on the distribution of their papers the same way as an institutional open access policy seems to do?
I've learned that academics can ensure that their papers can be freely distributed, even when those papers are published at places that require transferring copyright, simply by granting a ...
22
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2
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1k
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Do publishers simply waive their exclusive rights without any resistance?
Assumption based upon my experience from CS: Typically, the business model of academic publishers is to archive and disseminate papers whose authors have transferred exclusive publication rights to ...
22
votes
5
answers
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What determines the copyright year for a publication?
I wonder what determines the copyright year for a publication. I thought that the copyright year would be the same as the publication year, but seeing in (1)
put me in doubt (publication year: 2011; ...
18
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2
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Copyright for lectures, slides and textbook: university or professor?
I'll be starting as an adjunct professor soon at a smaller university, and I'm starting to prepare lectures and slides for teaching there.
In the future, I'm also thinking of publishing a textbook ...
6
votes
1
answer
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Chapter in printed thesis vs. journal article
My computer science PhD thesis contains a chapter which is heavily based on an already published conference paper. I have published my thesis online, and fulfilled the requirements for my degree this ...
45
votes
4
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Which ACM copyright license to use?
ACM now offers authors of published papers a choice of two copyright licenses: the "traditional" ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License.
How should I choose between these two ...
30
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4
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What to do when principal investigator publishes your work without putting you down as a coauthor?
Say I am post-doc in the USA, and my PI (principal investigator) just published a review I wrote, with pictures I took of my experiments without putting my name as the author. What tools do I have at ...
27
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3
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Is it legal in the US for a student to download a copy of a textbook, to study?
(this is coming out of a comment thread regarding this question.)
The USA has a Fair Use legal provision restricting its copyright law:
17 U.S.C. § 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of ...
23
votes
4
answers
16k
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Am I allowed to share a final copy of my published paper privately?
Suppose I published a paper in a journal with no open-access policy, but with the usual constraints regarding copyright.
A researcher that I do not know in person has asked me for a copy of a this ...
20
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2
answers
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Which license should be chosen in arXiv for a paper to be published in Elsevier?
I would like to know what license needs to be chosen in arXiv for a paper that is to be sent to an Elsevier journal. I have read the terms of both arXiv and Elsevier attentively, but I'm still in ...
20
votes
3
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Who holds intellectual property rights on a thesis?
I thought of an interesting idea for a thesis for my Masters program and I think I would eventually be able to sell a product that is built from the algorithms/code that I develop for this thesis. I ...
17
votes
2
answers
4k
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How does copyright work on screen captures?
I am writing an article comparing three pieces of software. I have taken screen shots of all of them and would like to use them in a non-open access article. Given the intended journal, there is a ...
16
votes
2
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MathSciNet reviews license
I have been asked to become a MathSciNet reviewer. I personally find the database very useful, but I am a bit held back by the fact the database is kept behind a paywall.
What is actually the ...
10
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3
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What is the legal status of using copyrighted images in academic/conference talks?
I am told that we can use copyrighted images in our lectures to students now as they are for purely educational purposes, as long as we correctly attribute them. That is to say there is no need to ask ...
9
votes
2
answers
3k
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How to use copyrighted images in an article?
I have developed an educational software in which I make use of some copyrighted images, for example from Disney, and am now writing an article about it.
How should I reference or cite that those ...
7
votes
1
answer
1k
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How to make sure that my lecture notes do not infringe on copyrights?
I'm trying to change the numbers in problems I write for examples I use in my class as well as assignments. However the problems are still inspired by the textbook. Are the problems sufficiently ...
26
votes
2
answers
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If my paper is accepted in a Springer journal, can I submit my version of the manuscript to arXiv immediately after acceptance?
I have read the Springer copyrights and self-archiving policy, but they are a bit confusing. For example in the first of them, you may find this:
Author may self-archive an author-created version ...
21
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4
answers
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Who Owns the Publishing Rights of my Ph.D. Thesis?
I wrote my Ph.D. thesis without copy/pasting any of my prior published articles. Now that the university library got hold of my Ph.D. thesis; I'm wondering who owns the entire publishing rights of my ...
20
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2
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Using images with CC-BY-SA license in slides or a thesis
If I am using images with a copyleft license (e.g. CC-BY-SA), each of them as a separate, properly attributed piece, does it mean that the whole work (be it slides, a thesis or a book) need to be ...
17
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3
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Re-typesetting an old paper, what to do with the result?
I am using an old paper, published in 1986.
It is in the form of a "Letter to Nature" (which is a scientific journal).
It doesn't appear to be typeset in TeX, at least not TeX as we know it today.
...
16
votes
5
answers
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Is it okay to upload the PDF of my non-open access papers in academia.edu or research gate?
Is it legal to upload a PDF of my non-open-access papers to research networks, such as ResearchGATE and Academia.edu?
I am pretty sure that it could cause some problems, because normally people ...
15
votes
3
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Is it a faux pas to ask for a colleague's figure in a separate but related publication?
I'm an undergraduate with virtually no experience with the expectations of academia (so I apologize in advance for the silly question). I'm finishing up a paper describing my research and would like ...
15
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2
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Confidentiality of thesis data: PhD with industrial partner
In the field of Mechanical Engineering, when doing a PhD in a University but in partnership with a company, at some universities, an agreement is signed between the company and the university (or ...
14
votes
2
answers
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Is it okay to scan a book (that I own) strictly for personal use?
I have a physical book from an Australian publisher which is nearly a thousand pages long, so it's quite hard to carry around with me. It is a book of worked solutions for a math textbook. It has no ...
13
votes
2
answers
2k
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Code in journal papers
Most papers do not specify a separate license for the source code, so presumably it would be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the paper. Typically, this means that the copyright lies with ...
12
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3
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Publishing vs. putting work online under a free license
Suppose a work (a book with abstract math research) is presented as LaTeX source under a copyleft license available at a public Git hosting service.
Will scientists be reluctant to cite such a work, ...
12
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2
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What licensing concerns are there for using content from Stack Exchange in an academic paper?
All content under Stack Exchange is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Does this mean that any academic paper that uses content from Stack Exchange must also be licensed ...
11
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3
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Is an automatic copyright transfer clause in publisher's instructions to authors typically enforced/enforceable?
Some publishers have a clause like the following in their author instructions:
Submission of a manuscript implies... that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree ...
10
votes
1
answer
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Is it legal to share an electronic copy of a few book chapters?
I have scanned a few chapters of a textbook (about 10%) and I want to make the electronic files available to my classmates. The reason why I scanned the chapters initially was so that I could print ...
8
votes
1
answer
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Can I scan data from a paper for my own research?
I am a PhD student working in mechanical properties of materials and will be finishing soon. My PhD is in numerical modelling, so I need experimental data (stress-strain curves) to validate my ...
8
votes
2
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Arxiving accepted manuscript after publication in Elsevier/IEEE/etc
The Elsevier policies state:
Authors can share their accepted manuscript: by updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the accepted manuscript
I haven’t arxived a preprint; the paper is published ...
7
votes
1
answer
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Is it okay to submit manuscript to arXiv after "revise and resubmit"?
I've read this question about how some publishers (e.g., Springer) allows authors to submit to arXiv before journal submission, but they make authors wait for a year after acceptance to submit to ...