In October 2018, we released our guide to Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts and made it available as a free Creative Commons-licensed download as well as in print in the Authors Alliance store. The guide identifies clauses that frequently appear in publishing contracts, explains in plain language what these terms (and typical variations) mean, […]
Jeanne Fromer and Christopher Sprigman of NYU Law School recently published their new casebook Copyright Law: Cases and Materials as an open access work. A PDF of the book is freely available to everyone to read and download under a Creative Commons license, and may also be purchased as a low-cost print-on-demand book. Instructors who […]
Since we first published our guide to Understanding Rights Reversion in 2015, our rights reversion resources page has been a one-stop shop for authors seeking the information they need to get back the rights in their works. For those who are new to the concept of rights reversion, the guide is a good place to […]
Readers familiar with Authors Alliance’s work will know that we’ve created a suite of resources to help authors get the rights back to their works, including a guide to Understanding Rights Reversion, templates and guidance on how to craft a persuasive rights reversion letter, and information on termination of transfer under U.S. law. One question […]
Earlier this year, the University of California (UC) made headlines when it chose to end its journal licensing deal with publishing giant Elsevier. The UC negotiation team recently released a toolkit for other institutions wishing to make changes to their own publishing agreements. The following announcement of the toolkit is excerpted from a post on […]
In our Spotlight on Book Publication Contracts series, we are shining the light on the ways that authors can negotiate for publication contract terms that help them make and keep their books available in the ways they want. This series is based on the information, strategies, and success stories in our guide to Understanding and […]
For creators who want their works to be widely shared and enjoyed, terminating transfers of copyright are a powerful option for getting works back out in front of audiences. Authors Alliance has long been a proponent of giving authors statutory rights to terminate transfers of copyright (often called “reversionary” or “termination of transfer” laws). Among […]
We’re pleased to announce that our educational guidebooks for authors—which cover rights reversion, open access, fair use, and publication contracts—are now available on Project MUSE, a repository for monographs and journals created by Johns Hopkins University in cooperation with libraries and university presses. Founded in 1995, Project MUSE is a non-profit home for scholarship in […]
We thank Jill Cirasella and Polly Thistlethwaite of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York for contributing the following guest post, which provides some background on their recent book chapter “Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual.” For years, we have encouraged researchers at our institution, the Graduate Center […]
We’d like to thank co-authors Kyle K. Courtney and David R. Hansen for permission to re-post the following article, which originally appeared on the Copyright at Harvard Library blog on March 1, 2019. One of the beautiful things about fair use is how it can soften the copyright act, which is in many ways highly […]
