Frequently asked questions
Can you tell me more about Crown
copyright?
Crown copyright exists in works made by Her Majesty or by an
officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties such as
legislation, government reports and other official material. If the
work in question was commercially published within 75 years of the
end of the calendar year in which it was made, Crown copyright will
last for 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was
published. Conversely if it is not so published, Crown copyright
will last for 125 years.
More recently the Crown has licensed a broad range of public
sector information under an Open
Government Licence. This is now the standard licence for Crown
Copyright works. For some other Crown copyright works such as
parliamentary materials, the Crown's Click-Use licence (which the
University holds with the HMSO) governs the way you can deal with
Crown copyright works.
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What are moral rights?
An individual author of a copyright work will also have certain
"moral rights". The two most important rights are:
- The right to be identified as the author (although the author
needs to "assert" this right). A failure to so identify will amount
to an infringement of the author's moral rights. Even if you have
the copyright owner's permission to reproduce the work, the
obligation to identify the author will remain.
- The right to object to derogatory treatment of the work (this
can include any deletion, addition, alteration to the work which
affects the reputation of the author). If a derogatory treatment of
the work is made public, it will infringe the author's rights.
Unlike copyright itself, moral rights cannot be assigned and
remain with the author.
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What are performance
rights?
In broad terms, performance rights will come into being when an
individual gives a performance. A performance in this context would
include a variety of different types of performance from a poetry
reading to an improvised lecture.
Performance rights usually only need to be considered when a
performance is to be recorded (either sound only or film). You will
infringe an individual's performance rights if, without their
consent, you record their performance or play a recording (which
was made without consent) in public. It is therefore important if
you wish to record a performance, that you seek permission from the
performer. Similarly, if you are making a performance, such as
giving a lecture, you should be asked for permission before someone
else makes a recording of it.
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What about copyright for my
own work?
If you plan to publish any of your own work, copyright is an
area you should consider carefully. It is standard practice for a
publisher to ask you to sign some form of contract when publishing
material with them. You should always read the terms and conditions
very carefully before signing such an agreement. Many publishers
may expect you to assign copyright to them for a set period of
time. This may mean that you cannot use your own material for
teaching purposes without first asking the publisher's permission.
They may also restrict what you can do with your own material in
terms of depositing it in an open archive or publishing it in an
open access journal.
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Do I have to sign a publisher’s
agreement?
In most cases yes, although some publishers will allow you to
retain copyright of your material. You can also amend the
publishing contract and insert new terms and conditions which will
ensure you are able to re-use your own work in your own teaching
and research.
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What is Open Access?
The open access movement was established in the late 1990s
partly by academics and librarians who were frustrated with the
increasing rise in journal subscription fees. The open access
movement believes that scholarly information should be made
available to the public for free, rather than locked into
subscription databases. There are numerous open access journals
available, for example BioMed Central, which contains
over 150 open access journals in the medical and life sciences.
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How does Open Access relate to
Open Archives?
Open archive repositories are increasingly being set up, usually
by large institutions to capture their research output. Academic
staff are encouraged to deposit their research publications into
open archives so they are freely available to other researchers.
These may take the form of "pre-print" versions of a published
article or they may also include the published version. In fact,
Research Councils UK (RCUK) have now decreed that publicly funded
research must be deposited in an open archive. However,
unsurprisingly, some publishers feel threatened by this trend and
you should always check your publishing agreement before depositing
in such an archive.
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©2011 Jane
Secker, adapted for use at York St. John University