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Author Rights

Today's Hours: 8am - 10pm - All service hours

Copyright, which falls under the larger umbrella of intellectual property rights, is the main type of right that you have as an author. When you create an original work, such as an article, book, play, or artistic creation, it is automatically protected by copyright in Canada. When you are ready to publish, be careful not to sign away your rights to publishers. The library has expertise in scholarly publishing both as purchasers of content and as open access publishers, and we are available to assist you in protecting your rights and interpreting which rights are being asked for when publishing.  

Learn more about some of the ways we can help via:   

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Services for faculty & instructors

We are here to help you navigate the complex and often contradictory policies of publishers, journals, pre-prints servers, and funders. We can help clarify copyright and intellectual property rights in Canada and other jurisdictions.    

We offer:  

  • In-class and other instructions sessions tailored to your course or research labs 
  • One-on-one consultations   
  • Community workshops (open to all) on a variety of scholarly communication topics   

Resources

  • Sherpa Romeo is a directory of publishers' policies around open access, archiving, pre-prints servers, and embargoes 
  • The Directory of Open Access Journals 
  • Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL)’s Information for Authors page provides information on key topics in scholarly communications including the Canadian Author Addendum to Publication Agreement that can be used to modify Canadian publishers’ agreements and the Guide to Using the Canadian Author Addendum. 
  • Creative Commons and specifically Creative Commons Licenses which provides samples of a variety of copyright licenses.

Upcoming workshops

We offer a variety of workshops to support your scholarship through the Open Scholarship workshop series.

    There are no upcoming workshops at the moment. Check back soon for more, or browse our full workshop calendar to see the other workshops we offer.

    CalendarWorkshop descriptions
    The library is committed to ensuring that members of our user community with disabilities have equal access to our services and resources and that their dignity and independence is always respected. If you encounter a barrier and/or need an alternate format, please fill out our Library Print and Multimedia Alternate-Format Request Form. Contact us if you’d like to provide feedback: lib.a11y@uoguelph.ca