Copyright protects your creation. When you own the copyright in a work, you control how it is used in order to protect its value. Others who want to use the work have to buy or otherwise get your permission.
Generally, an original work is automatically protected by copyright the moment you create it. By registering your copyright, you receive a certificate issued by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) that can be used in court as evidence that you own it.
Your copyright exists in Canada during your lifetime and for 50 years following your death. After that, the work is in the public domain, and anyone can use it. This is true for most works, but there are exceptions.
When you are ready to publish, be careful not to sign away your author rights to publishers. The library has expertise in scholarly publishing both as purchasers of content and as open access publishers ourselves. We can help you:
- Learn more about our commitment to Open Access, Article Processing Charges (APCs) and publishing discounts for U of G researchers.
- Publish in journals that have progressive copyright, access, and archiving policies. Sherpa Romeo is a directory of publishers' policies around open access, archiving, pre-prints servers, and embargoes.
- Publish in scholarly open access journal publications. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists thousands of open access journals.
- Avoid predatory publishers, journals, and conferences.
- Comply with open access and data sharing requirements or policies, such as the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications and the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy, by making your work available in an institutional repository.
- Learn more about pre-print servers like arXiv and other paper repositories like Researchgate, Academia.edu, and SciHub.
Get assistance
- Connect with us to ask a question or to book an appointment.
- Learn more about our appointments.
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
- Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL)’s Information for Authors provides information on key topics in scholarly communications including the Author Rights Addendum that can be used to modify Canadian publishers’ agreements and the Guide to Using the Addendum.
Creative Commons and specifically Creative Commons Licenses which provides samples of a variety of copyright licenses.
Copyright Collective Societies links to collective societies which administer the rights of several copyright owners, granting permission and setting conditions of use.
Upcoming Workshops
We offer a variety of workshops to support your scholarship through the Open Scholarship workshop series.
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