Scholarly or academic publishing distributes academic research and scholarship, often through peer-reviewed journals.
A number of organizations work to advance and support scholarly publishing, and advocate Open Access to research as well. These are a few.
These widely regarded websites offer background and guidance about copyright.
Libraries pay for access to scholarly work, the research that university faculty create and publish an academic journals, through databases. Open access journals seek to provide scholarly research and creative work to everyone, thus side-stepping expensive subscription fees.
The Library Publishing Coalition, an independent membership association, works to support and further libraries' activities as publishers. Its 126 members range from Columbia University to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, as well as the Universityof California, Vanderbilt University and George Mason University.
The Public Knowledge Project started at University of British Columbia in 1998 and now based at both Stanford University and Simon Fraser University libraries, describes itself as "a multi-university initiative developing (free) open source software and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing" and declares its goal as giving faculty and students will have "the opportunity to utilize (at no cost) PKP’s open source systems to host and manage journals and conferences in which they are involved, with the goal of making more of this work publicly and globally available."
Authors are copyright holders as soon as their work is "fixed in a tangible medium. Authors additionally have exclusive rights to their works for a specific time period under U.S. copyright law unless the author transfers any rights through a written agreement. Copyright protection covers any work, ranging from literary works to motion pictures and sound recordings and anything in between. Learn more about the U.S. Copyright Code here: 17 U.S.C. § 102.
Authors may choose also their own copyright license through Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that works to enable sharing and use of creativity and knowledge. The Association of Research Libraries "Author Rights" website includes advice and a list of author rights' websites.
Using a publishing agreement addendum to retain author rights
Most publishers offer authors an agreement that transfers copyright to them, but authors can retain some or all of the rights to their work so they may distribute their work and include in their institution's repository. Many universities provide their faculty with an addendum to allow them to freely use their own work in their classrooms or for research. SPARC, with Creative Commons, also offers an Author Addendum - available for free on their website or to download from link below - as a way to revise or amend publishers' agreements and retain control of your author rights.
These widely regarded websites offer background and guidance about copyright.