According to WPI's Intellectual Property Policy, you retain the copyright to academic and scholarly works you create. You also retain the copyright to materials you develop for courses and curriculum at WPI, while granting WPI a nonexclusive license to use your work for educational and research purposes in the future. There are some exceptions to the above; consult the policy to learn more.
For questions about the Intellectual Property Policy and how it covers your work, please email copyright@wpi.edu or call 508-831-5725.
If you have a question or issue relating to copyright, please contact us at copyright@wpi.edu
Please note that the material on this site is intended for information purposes and should not be interpreted as legal advice. This guide is intended to provide students, faculty and staff with basic information about copyright and fair use, with the goal of answering many of the most commonly asked questions about copyright in education and research.
When you hold copyright in a work, you have the right to determine where your work is published, who has access, and whether and how it can be re-used. When you publish your work, you may be asked to give away the rights to your work through a publishing agreement, or copyright transfer agreement. If you simply transfer your copyright, this will have consequences for how you can use your own work in future: you may not be able to distribute copies of your work to your students and colleagues, adapt your work in a future publication, or even share your work on a course website, digital repository, scholarly profile site, or personal website.
Two important points to remember:
When you sign a contract with a publisher, you will often be required to transfer your copyright to the publisher, and retain certain rights as the author of the work. When you read over your contract, pay special attention to the language regarding transfer of copyright and author's rights. The rights you retain in the contract might include the following:
If you do not think the contract allows you to retain sufficient rights for your own future needs, consider looking into the SPARC Author Addendum, which provides more information on authors' rights and suggested language for altering the terms of the contract to increase the rights you can retain.
Learn more about the SPARC Author Addendum here: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/brochure-html/
**Want to check current journal policies to find out which authors' rights are typically retained? Go to the SHERPA/RoMEO (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php) website and search by journal title.
License Your Work
If you choose to release your work openly without going through a traditional publisher—such as uploading it to a digital repository; publishing it to a blog or profile site; or posting it on a personal website—you can specify the terms under which others can use your work by applying a license. Some of the most common open licenses are Creative Commons licenses.
Additional Resources
To preserve your right but still allow reuse, consider using a license. Creative Commons is a licensing system that allows you to grant certain rights to others while retaining the copyright to your work. CC has several licenses, which are used for different purposes.
"The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. The tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work."
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
This information is directly from Creative Commons.