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Digital Library Center: Scholarly Communication & Research Resources

Sharing Your Research

General information on copyright is available from SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), as well as on this page. Key points to remember:

  • Open Access articles and books are used and cited more often, resulting in a greater acknowledgment of work and impact for their authors
  • As the author, you can retain your rights
  • Even if you did not originally retain your rights, many publishers still allow you to openly share your materials through institutional archives, like the Institutional Repository @ UF, and there are easy resources for doing so.
  • The University of Florida Libraries are available to help with copyright questions.

Ways to Share Your Research

  • For unpublished works, when submitting an article for publication:
    The Scholars Copyright Addendum Generator helps authors create a PDF form to attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that the author retains certain rights, to reproduce, distribute, and display the article in connection with teaching, presentations, other scholarly works, and other professional activities. Science Commons offers the Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine, which helps scholars generate a PDF form that can be attached to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that certain rights are retained.
    Further information on author copyright and rights from SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition).
  • For already published research
    • If you know you possess the copyright or rights to deposit in your institutional repository:
      Use the Grant of Permissions to allow for Internet Distribution of your research through the Institutional Repository @UF. The Grant of Permissions form still allows you to retain all copyright, while sharing your research with the world.
    • If you aren't sure of your rights to your work:
      To see if your already published articles can be shared through an Open Access Library and Archive, check the publication's individual rules or see SHERPA/RoMEO to search for permissions based on journal names.
      SHERPA/RoMEO explains how and when authors can share their work by publisher and journal.
      • For instance, by default Elsevier (publisher):
        Allows authors: to archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing) articles on author's personal or institutional server
        With these restrictions: published source must be acknowledged; must link to journal home page; publishers version/PDF cannot be used;
        Also note: articles in some journals can be made Open Access on payment of additional charge.
        This means that authors who have published in Elsevier journals can automatically include their articles in their home Institutional Repositories. Thus, all UF authors can submit their articles from Elsevier for inclusion in the Institutional Repository @UF.

Enhancing and Supporting Scholarly Communication in Teaching

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