Intellectual Property
- What is intellectual property?
- Why should I deposit my work in Investigo?
- If my works have already been published in periodicals or books published by publishers or institutions, isn’t it illegal to deposit them in the repository?
- Is it possible to deposit already published dissertations?
- My dissertation has been elaborated under the modality "Compendium of publications", what are the implications of this for its deposit in Investigo?
- How do I know if I can deposit a full text version of my works in Investigo?
- What are Sherpa/Romeo and Dulcinea?
- What is an "embargo"?
- What does "restricted access" mean in Investigo?
- What is the purpose of the "Investigo license"?
- What are, and what is the purpose of the CC licenses (creative commons)?
It is the set of rights granted to authors over their scientific, artistic, literary or technical works. It is also used the term "authors’ rights", where the difference between moral rights and economic rights should be noted.
Moral rights are rights granted to authors because of the fact that they have created any work. They are rights of individuals and are non-waivable and inalienable. Editors or other legal persons do not have any moral rights, but their rights are derived from the contracts established with the authors. These moral rights bound, above all, to the attribution of the work’s author and to respect its integrity.
Among the economic rights, the most important ones are the exploitation rights (known in the Anglo-Saxon world as "copyright"). They are the rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance and transformation of a work. In principle they also belong to the author, so those activities cannot be performed on the work without permission from the author. These exploitation rights can be transferred to third parties as happens with articles or other research works when delivered to editors or other institutions in order to be published. In turn, that exploitation rights transfer might be exclusive or non-exclusive.
Apart from the considerations relative to the Open Access movement support and the improvement of the sustainability of the scientific communication system, there is legislation that requires the research staff to deposit a copy of their research works in open access repositories. This requirement affects, firstly, the doctoral dissertations under Royal Decree 99/2011 which regulates the official doctorate studies (art. 14.5). Similarly, Law 14/2011 of the Science, Technology and Innovation establishes that "the research staff whose research activity is mainly financed with General State Budget funds will make publicly available a digital copy of the final version of the contents which have been accepted to be published in serial or periodical research publications, as soon as it is possible, but not later than twelve months after the official date of publication" (art. 37.2).
Given that the public dissemination of the digital versions of the articles must be done through open access repositories, the University of Vigo has set up its own institutional repository denominated "Investigo". In this repository, apart from those articles and doctoral dissertations, will be also deposited on a compulsory basis all the publications or works which are taken into consideration in the scientific output assessment processes of the University: other articles, books, parts of books and documents resulting from congresses. The deposit must, in all cases, respect intellectual property rights. So if it is not possible to deposit the full text, it will suffice with depositing the metadata which is generated when verifying the deposit through the self-archiving system.
No. Apart from the fact that, in some cases, it is required by legislation the deposit in an open access repository is not equal to its publication nor is it meant to replace it. It actually involves depositing, with the aim of disseminating and preservation an electronic copy of the research works, but always respecting the exploitation rights that may be held by publishers. In the case of scientific periodicals, most of the publishers allow the research staff to deposit electronic versions of their articles.
Regarding doctoral dissertations, its deposit in Investigo does not prevent its later publication as books or articles through scientific or commercial publishing houses.
Yes, but before it is needed to contact the publisher or institution that has published the dissertation in order to obtain the authorisation to deposit in the repository of the University of Vigo the author’s version and agree the terms of such authorisation. The authorisation must be formalised in writing.
Royal Decree 99/2011 which regulates official doctorate studies stipulates that all the dissertations defended at the University must be deposited in an open access repository, establishing no distinctions at all regarding the modalities. However, it is advised that the author of the dissertation by compendium of publications should contact the publishers of the publications that comprise the dissertation with the purpose of obtaining from them the authorisations needed and always in written form.
With the exception of dissertations, Investigo only contains documents and works which have been published so it is required to conciliate the obligation of depositing the works in the repository with the respect towards the exploitation rights assigned to publishers or any other third party. Therefore, for each document there is the need to obtain the authorisation from the holders of the exploitation rights.
However, regarding the articles from journals there are tools which allows us to know, without having to contact the publishers, the possibilities for depositing the articles in the repository. In particular, regarding international scientific journals at our disposal the Sherpa/Romeo database, and regarding Spanish journals, the Dulcinea database. If the journal in which an article has been published is not on Sherpa/Romeo or on Dulcinea, it is needed to address the publisher in order to know its policies relating open access or, in its case, to obtain the corresponding authorisation.
It is important to clarify that, frequently, publishers allow the deposit of a final version of the document (that of the publisher or the author’s revised version), although under the condition that a link or any other type of mark to the publisher’s version is included.
Sherpa/Romeo is a database which informs of the scientific journals publishers’ policies regarding the deposit of their published articles in open access repositories. Dulcinea is its Spanish equivalent, facilitating the knowledge of the policies of Spanish journals publishers.
It is the period of time that is to elapse from the publication of a work to its open-access dissemination. It is a period imposed by the holders of the exploitation rights of a work (generally the publishers) that varies from 2 to 48 months. Embargoes are managed by Investigo so that, after that period, the full text is released, being available to the public.
Restricted access is applied to those documents for which full text, because of legal reasons or because it is banned by the publishers, may not be disseminated publicly in the repository. In such cases, if the University Library has the rights to access the publication by means of the appropriate licensing and is thus authorised by the publisher, the repository will grant access to the full text only to the members of the University of Vigo that consult the repository from an authenticated IP address.
The Investigo license is a deposit license which is intended to let the authors of the works authorise explicitly and formally the University of Vigo to disseminate via the internet the documents deposited in the institutional repository, as well as to ensure its preservation in the long term. It is not under any circumstance an exclusive cession of rights.
It is a system of licenses devised to distribute and disseminate intellectual and cultural contents in open access format. Through these licenses the author determines the uses that might be made on the creations. Creative Commons considers four different usage clauses or conditions: obligation to authorial attribution, marketing authorisation, authorisation to produce derivative works and the obligation to share any derivative work under the same license. Out of the combination of these four clauses arise the six basic types of CC licenses with different degrees of permissiveness regarding the uses of the work which can be performed.
Given that Investigo gathers already published works, the CC licenses are only applied to doctoral dissertations as documents not yet published. By default, the repository implements the most restrictive CC license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) that forbids the commercial uses of the dissertation and the generation of derivative works based on it. However, the author of the dissertation may change this license for any of the other ones just by modifying the corresponding clauses.
More info in http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/
