Skip to main content

Questions tagged [copyright]

Copyright issues: publication agreements, copyright transfer upon publication, legal status of work-for-hire in academia, etc.

75 votes
4 answers
101k views

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 ...
User 17670's user avatar
  • 2,260
88 votes
6 answers
24k views

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 ?
Stefano Borini's user avatar
35 votes
6 answers
4k views

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 ...
Quora Feans's user avatar
  • 4,071
28 votes
5 answers
4k views

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 ...
JRN's user avatar
  • 11.9k
79 votes
9 answers
114k views

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 ...
New Science Faculty's user avatar
47 votes
8 answers
4k views

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 ...
user avatar
40 votes
3 answers
28k views

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 ...
Shashank Sawant's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
5k views

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 ...
ATTMK2's user avatar
  • 333
14 votes
3 answers
2k views

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 ...
henning no longer feeds AI's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
Cape Code's user avatar
  • 27.1k
53 votes
3 answers
4k views

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-...
David Ketcheson's user avatar
42 votes
6 answers
37k views

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 ...
nxkryptor's user avatar
  • 1,018
29 votes
4 answers
5k views

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 ...
Javeer Baker's user avatar
  • 5,507
24 votes
2 answers
8k views

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 ...
F'x's user avatar
  • 73.5k
20 votes
3 answers
6k views

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 ...
Yes's user avatar
  • 7,684
22 votes
5 answers
1k views

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 ...
E.P.'s user avatar
  • 6,855
16 votes
3 answers
3k views

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 ...
O. R. Mapper's user avatar
  • 18.5k
12 votes
2 answers
3k views

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), ...
wsspzwps's user avatar
  • 771
46 votes
8 answers
6k views

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 ...
O. R. Mapper's user avatar
  • 18.5k
22 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
O. R. Mapper's user avatar
  • 18.5k
22 votes
5 answers
19k views

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; ...
Franck Dernoncourt's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
7k views

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 ...
Sam's user avatar
  • 283
6 votes
1 answer
673 views

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 ...
Joachim Breitner's user avatar
45 votes
4 answers
15k views

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 ...
D.W.'s user avatar
  • 8,279
30 votes
4 answers
3k views

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 ...
user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
20k views

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 ...
einpoklum's user avatar
  • 39.4k
23 votes
4 answers
16k views

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 ...
Vicent's user avatar
  • 1,174
20 votes
2 answers
13k views

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 ...
Al-Khwarizmi's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
9k views

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 ...
jluzwick's user avatar
  • 303
17 votes
2 answers
4k views

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 ...
StrongBad's user avatar
  • 104k
16 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
Klaus's user avatar
  • 262
10 votes
3 answers
7k views

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 ...
Simd's user avatar
  • 3,441
9 votes
2 answers
3k views

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 ...
Layla's user avatar
  • 8,747
7 votes
1 answer
1k views

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 ...
Ying Zhou's user avatar
  • 171
26 votes
2 answers
8k views

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 ...
ThisGuy's user avatar
  • 661
21 votes
4 answers
15k views

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 ...
o-0's user avatar
  • 7,600
20 votes
2 answers
4k views

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 ...
Piotr Migdal's user avatar
  • 26.4k
17 votes
3 answers
1k views

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. ...
Frames Catherine White's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
7k views

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 ...
SAH's user avatar
  • 966
15 votes
3 answers
1k views

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 ...
user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
Nicolas's user avatar
  • 1,263
14 votes
2 answers
13k views

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 ...
Ryland Doe's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
2k views

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 ...
Mangara's user avatar
  • 2,242
12 votes
3 answers
582 views

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, ...
porton's user avatar
  • 2,039
12 votes
2 answers
506 views

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 ...
Joe Z.'s user avatar
  • 223
11 votes
3 answers
1k views

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 ...
ff524's user avatar
  • 109k
10 votes
1 answer
22k views

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 ...
ahorn's user avatar
  • 311
8 votes
1 answer
344 views

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 ...
Sam Student's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
3k views

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 ...
ManuelaRaba's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

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 ...
Alexi's user avatar
  • 859

15 30 50 per page