OA 101: Who Owns Scholarly Work? Copyright and Open Access

Speaker: Dave Hansen, Executive Director, Author’s Alliance

Who owns the copyright in scholarly work has been one of the most confusing, yet most important, legal questions in the move toward open access. While the answer might seem like it should be obvious (“authors!”), the reality is that layers of university copyright policies, copyright’s “work for hire” doctrine, publisher copyright transfer agreements, and funder licensing requirements make this a complex issue.

This session will address how these different layers of rights, copyright transfers, and licenses affect the ability of authors and their institutions to make their works available openly as well as emerging issues such as AI usage of scholarly works and how open licensing and copyright can support or inhibit those uses.

Recordings of each session will be made available afterward. These sessions are intended to provide lightweight professional development for librarians whose work intersects with open access or may do so in the future.

These sessions are open to anyone working in libraries, and participants can register here. SPARC membership is NOT required, and our goal in this series is to support the wider community, particularly those at institutions with fewer resources to support OA-related work.