In order to consider the implications of copyright for your research publications, it is important to understand some of the basics of copyright.

A brief history of copyright

Copyright is a legal concept that 'protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission' (Gov.uk, 2023). It was first established in the UK in 1709 under Queen Anne to protect the interests of publishers.

The artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), known for his satirical drawing, paintings and engravings such as Gin Lane or The Rake's Progress, lobbied parliament to defend and protect the rights of artists. His work was supposed to be distributed via subscription but many illegal copies were circulated for which he did not gain any revenue. From his action the first Copyright Act was proclaimed in 1735.

The main principles of the act were to ensure that people who produced creative works would keep doing so and would be rewarded for it, and that anyone who wanted to exploit this work would have to reward the original creator.

Copyright in the UK now

The current law in the UK was passed in 1988: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
In the UK there is no copyright register, you are automatically the copyright holder when you create original work (literary, dramatic, musical works, software, films...). The length of copyright depends on the type of material you created. It ranges from 70 years after the author's death to 25.

To help you understand copyright in the UK, you can start with our Library Guide on Copyright and explore the information on the government website about Patents, trade marks, copyright and designs.

The work of an academic member of staff is generally owned by the institution for which they work. However, the University of Sunderland Intellectual Property Policy states that the University does not claim this right with regards to academic publications and other types of material linked to their research. There are exceptions when the work is directly commissioned by the institution or by a third-party.

The member(s) of staff who authored the publication are thus able to manage the copyright of their publications.

In the traditional model of academic publishing author transferred their copyright to the publisher, either by giving them an exclusive license or by transferring copyright while retaining moral rights. 

The Open Access movement aims to shift the the control on scholarly publications from publishers to authors by encouraging the use of Creative Commons license.

Authors are encouraged to use CC-BY licenses for their research to allow for a wider distribution of the research, avoid the need to pay fess to publishers when reusing published material and to allow for adaptation of re-mixing of the work to create new research while attributing the work to its original author.

Other CC licenses are available and you can explore them in the resource below created by Barbaro Longo-Flint under a CC-BY license.

A strategy to support authors in keeping their rights to their publications is known as Rights Retention. This is supported by PlanS, a coalition of funders with a stated aim to make funded research available without a paywall. UKRI, Welcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are examples of such funders.

Through this strategy authors asset their rights on their intellectual property before sending it to a publisher.

The aim is to support the green route to Open Access by claiming rights in the Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM) ahead of submission. Authors asserts that they retain all rights to their publications and will apply a CC-BY license to the AAM.

The University has a Rights Retention Policy to support author who have funding from funders who align with Plan S requirement.

Authors may decide to apply rights retention in their submissions even without funding.

See the UKRN primer on Rights Retention for more information.