In traditional publishing, most publishing contracts include a Copyright Transfer Agreement section that transfers some or all of your rights to the publisher. This can result in giving up legal rights to use your work on course websites, distribute copies to students or colleagues, reuse portions of the work, or deposit your work in a public archive such as Vassar Scholarship.

To maintain control over your rights: 

• Publish in an open access journal, or as an OA publication, so that everyone always has free access to your work.
  • Open access publishing typically allows authors to retain copyright through the use of Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which can allow for distribution and reuse of material provided the original author is cited. The CC License Chooser helps you select the appropriate license for your work.
• Publish in a journal that allows you to retain the rights you need to re-use your own work. Search Sherpa Romeo to find publisher OA policies and publisher copyright/ archiving policies. 
• Negotiate with the publisher to maintain some or all of your specific rights.
  • SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Author Addendum 
  • SPARC Author Addendum PDF
  • Creative Commons Copyright Addendum

Brown, L., Dayan, M., McLaughlin, B., Schonfeld, R. C., Sherer, J., & van Rijn, E. (2023, September 19). Print Revenue and Open Access Monographs: A University Press Study. Ithaka S+R.

Key findings: Sales of open access books are the core of this study. Our key finding is that almost all of the OA monographs we reviewed generated at least some revenue from print + ebook sales, and a healthy percentage—close to 30 percent—enjoyed sales of $10,000 or greater.

Quilter, Laura. 2015. “2I Negotiating Author Agreements.” New England Copyright Boot Camp. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cbc/14.