Welcome to the A2P2 resource library. This curated collection of materials from Authors Alliance and other organizations presents information on topics of interest to scholarly communication pros and campus audiences alike.
Copyright Fundamentals- Copyright and Fair Use Micro-Course: Videos and short lessons created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, designed to help learners understand and apply the basics of copyright, Creative Commons licenses, and fair use in their own work.
- U.S. Copyright Office Circulars: Circulars published by the U.S. Copyright Office covering the basics and fundamental concepts of copyright law, highlights of policies and procedures of the Copyright Office, and registration issues for specific categories of works.
- “Why Register Your Copyright?”: Authors Alliance blog post outlining some of the benefits of registering copyrights.
- “How To Register Your Copyright”: Authors Alliance blog post explaining how to register works with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Fair Use
- Guide to Understanding Fair Use for Nonfiction Authors: Guide from Authors Alliance that helps nonfiction authors make confident fair use decisions when incorporating source materials into their writings.
- Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use: Statements of principles for and limitations of fair use, organized by the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University, outlining what various creative communities regard as a reasonable application of the copyright fair use doctrine.
- Fair Use Evaluator: Step-by-step tool, created by the ALA, to help users to understand how to evaluate fair use and to collect, organize, and archive the information they might need to support a fair use evaluation.
- Fair Use Index: Database of judicial opinions on fair use maintained by the U.S. Copyright Office, searchable by category and type of use (e.g., music, internet/digitization, parody).
Open Access
- Guide to Understanding Open Access: Guide from Authors Alliance to help authors understand when open access publishing makes sense for their works, why open access helps authors reach readers and advance knowledge, and how to release works under open access terms.
- Creative Commons License Types and Examples: Short guide from Creative Commons introducing the different CC licenses and when, where, how, and why to use them.
- Good Practices for University Open Access Policies: Best practices for college and university open access policies from the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard.
- Journal Publisher Negotiation Toolkit: Negotiation toolkit from the University of California Publisher Strategy and Negotiation Task Force providing support and insight for institutions interested in restructuring their publisher contracts for journal content.
- “A social networking site is not an open access repository”: Blog post from the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication explaining the differences between sites like Academia.edu and ResearchGate and institutional open access repositories.
- “My dissertation is online! Wait — my dissertation is online? Copyright & your magnum opus”: Workflow created by the Office of Scholarly Communications at the University of California, Berkeley to help graduate students tackle copyright and other legal questions in the context of submitting dissertations that will be made openly available online.
Public Domain
- Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States: Chart by Peter B. Hirtle of Cornell University Library providing copyright terms for different types of works and information about when they enter the public domain in the U.S.
- Is it in the Public Domain?: Handbook from Berkeley Law’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic to help users evaluate the copyright status of a work created in the United States between January 1, 1923 and December 31, 1977.
- Guide to Finding Interesting PD Works Online: List from the Public Domain Review featuring public domain collections from a wide array of sources—exhibitions, museums, concerts, television, radio, books, newspapers, and more.
- Public Domain FAQ: Q&A from the Duke Center for the Public Domain providing comprehensive information about the public domain.
Publication Contracts
- Guide to Understanding & Negotiating Book Publication Contracts: Guide from Authors Alliance that identifies clauses that frequently appear in publishing contracts, explains in plain language what these terms (and typical variations) mean, and presents strategies for negotiating “author-friendly” versions of these clauses.
- Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship: Model author-publisher contract and relevant addenda optimized for the publication of long-form digital scholarship from Emory University and the University of Michigan.
- Author Addendum: Legal instrument developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons that modifies publishers’ agreements to allow authors to keep key rights to their articles.
- How to Spot a Predatory Publisher: Guide from the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries with a checklist to help librarians and researchers make their own decisions about whether a particular journal is appropriate.
Research Data Management
- “Who ‘owns’ your data?”: Article from the University of California’s Office of Scholarly Communication discussing determining research data ownership (and whether there’s even anything to own), policies, contracts, and laws may control what can be done with the data, and the importance of data management planning.
- Research Data Management Recap: Guide from the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries outlining the basics of good data management for researchers.
- Data Management Plans: Guide from the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries outlining common areas found in research data management plans and how researchers can address these.
Getting Rights Back
- Guide to Understanding Rights Reversion: Guide from Authors Alliance that arms authors with the information and strategies they need to regain rights by exercising a contractual clause or through negotiation with the publisher.
- Crafting a Reversion Letter: Templates and guidance from Authors Alliance for writing a reversion request to a publisher.
- Termination of Transfer Tool at Rightsback.org: Tool developed by Authors Alliance and Creative Commons to help creators learn more about termination of transfer and how to evaluate whether a work is eligible for termination under U.S. law.
- Termination of Transfer Templates: Template and guidance from Authors Alliance for providing notice of termination to rightsholders and recording the termination with the U.S. Copyright Office.
- Rights Back Resource: Beta tool from Creative Commons that provides information about laws in other countries that may allow authors to recapture rights.
General Resources (Blogs, Journals, and Websites)
- In the Open Blog: Posts on libraries, scholarship, and publishing.
- Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication: Journal that focuses on the intersection of librarianship and publishing and the resulting role of libraries in both content dissemination and content creation.
- The Idealis: Open access overlay journal curated by librarian-experts working in the arena of scholarly communication featuring scholarly communication literature from across the Web.
- Scholarly Kitchen: Moderated blog on topics related to scholarly publishing and communication.
- Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography: Bibliography that includes over 125 selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports related to digital scholarly publishing activities of academic libraries since the late 1980’s, especially their open access book and journal publishing activities.
- UC Berkeley Scholarly Communication Services website: Resources from UC Berkeley’s Scholarly Communication Service that help scholars use, create, and publish scholarship in ways that promote its dissemination, accessibility, and impact.
- University of California Office of Scholarly Communication website: Website from UC’s Office of Scholarly Communication with information on open access publishing and policies; research data sharing; changing models of peer review, evaluation metrics, and publication funding; and other current issues in scholarly communications.
- Research Support Handy Guides: Series of guides from the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries on key topics in research support with titles on everything from how to spot a predatory publisher to demystifying the peer review process.
- “Research in 3 Minutes” Videos: Series of short videos from the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries that cover essential topics librarians need to know in around three minutes. Topics include publication, open access, data management, and metrics.