 Welcome to Take Five with UBC Library. Top tips for research and learning in five minutes or less. In this session, we'll be talking about how to protect your rights as an academic author. Thanks for joining us. As the author of an original scholarly work, you are also the copyright holder of the intellectual property within that work. This means that you have the sole right to reproduce, adapt, and distribute your work however you see fit. You can also choose to assign these rights to someone else. Scholarly publishers may require you to transfer some or all of your rights over to them in exchange for wider distribution. Before you enter into an agreement with a publisher, it is important to understand the rights you have and to know what you can do before, during, and after the publishing process in order to preserve your rights. There are three things to keep in mind before you submit your paper to a publisher. First, consider your publication venue carefully. New research or workflows and academic publishing practices are changing the face of scholarly communications. However, unscrupulous publishers are trying to take advantage of this rapidly shifting environment. Predatory publishers, as they are often called, position their vanity publications alongside more legitimate journals in an attempt to blend in. They usually send authors unsolicited emails inviting them to submit their work. By contrast, legitimate journals will wait for authors to contact them. Predatory publishers encourage scholars to pay article processing charges to appear in publications that do not engage in peer review or enforce rigorous editorial practices. Publishing in these journals can damage the reputations of both researchers and institutions. Think, Check, Submit provides scholars a handy list of questions to ask themselves about particular publishers before they submit their work. Second, you should identify the rights you feel are important to retain. As a scholar, you will probably want to build upon your work to maximize its reach and impact. Potential uses for your published research include using the research in your teaching, copying it for colleagues or research collaborators, depositing the work into a subject or institutional repository, and reusing portions in subsequent works. Some or all of the rights required to do these activities may not be available to you after you sign a publisher agreement. Knowing the rights you prefer to retain in advance may save you from signing a contract you end up regretting. Third, if an organization is funding your research, like the government or your academic institution, review their policies. Make sure you are aware of any requirements, such as the Canadian government's Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, which may have an impact on agreements you can sign with publishers. After you've published, you should retain a copy of your publisher agreement when possible. If you don't have a copy, refer to Sherpa Romeo to get a basic summary of the rights granted by different journals. You may also seek written permission from your publisher to share your works after the fact. Visit rightsback.org to get started. Once you've obtained permission, you should share approved versions of your work as widely as possible. Once your work has been accepted for publication, recall the rights you considered important and seek to retain them. Many publishers request that authors assign their copyright to the publisher. When necessary, you may have to negotiate to keep your rights. Always fully read and understand the publication agreement before you sign. Also consider attaching the Spark Canadian Authors Addendum to your publisher agreement, which provides legal language that facilitates the retention of your rights. Finally, know that retaining rights in your work allows you to increase its scholarly impact. By keeping your rights, you are also asserting your academic freedom and helping set a healthy precedent for future scholarship.