What copyright is
The Norwegian Copyright Act establishes that whoever creates a work holds the copyright to it. You receive copyright automatically, no registration or marking is required. The work must be expressed, for example through writing, an illustration or a figure. Copyright protects the expression, not the idea.
There are two types of copyright:
- Moral rights – the right to be named as the author/creator, and the right to prevent the work being used in a way that is prejudicial to your name or to the character of the work
- Economic rights – the right to produce copies, distribute, make publicly available and adapt the work
At UiB, employees and students retain the copyright to their own academic, literary and artistic works, unless otherwise explicitly agreed. This applies, for example, to master's theses, PhD theses, scientific articles, artistic productions and teaching materials.
What happens when you publish
When you sign a publishing agreement, you may transfer some or all of the economic rights to the publisher. You always retain the moral rights. Which rights you sign away and which you keep will be stated in the publishing agreement.
With open access publishing, it is common to use a licence under which the author retains copyright and where users may be granted extended rights to copy, share, adapt and further distribute the work. A Creative Commons licence is usually used: a standardised set of open licences granting varying degrees of reuse rights.
Article versions
Different versions of the same article may have different rights attached to them.
Manuscript version (preprint)
The version before the article is submitted for peer review. You hold all rights until you sign a contract with a publisher. Many journals allow you to share the manuscript version on personal pages and subject-specific archives (e.g. arXiv, bioRxiv), some allow it only after publication, and some do not allow it at all.
Accepted version (author's accepted manuscript (AAM)/postprint)
The peer-reviewed version accepted by the journal, but without the publisher's layout, formatting and copy-editing. UiB's rights retention policy ensures that the accepted version can be made openly available under a Creative Commons licence in the Norwegian Research Information Repository (NVA).
Note that the accepted version is not the same as a page proof. The accepted version is the final version you send to the publisher. The publisher then sends back a page proof.
Published version (Version of Record, VOR)
The final version published in the journal, with the journal's layout and formatting. Articles published open access (under a Creative Commons licence) can be made available in the Norwegian Research Information Repository (NVA) in the published version. For other articles, publishers rarely allow the published version to be made available in an open archive.
Creative Commons licences
Creative Commons licences regulate how others may use your work.
What Creative Commons is
Creative Commons licences do not replace copyright, they are licences a rights holder can use to give the public the rights to share and use a work in ways that would otherwise be restricted by copyright law. All the licences require the rights holder to be credited when a licensed work is used.
All CC licences require attribution (BY) of the author. You can also add other conditions:
- ShareAlike (SA) – adaptations must be published under the same licence
- NonCommercial (NC) – may not be used for commercial purposes
- NoDerivatives (ND) – adaptations are not permitted
The six standard licences
- CC BY (Attribution) – The licence allows users to distribute, modify and build upon the material in any medium or format, as long as the rights holder is credited. The licence permits commercial use.
- CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike) – The licence allows users to distribute, modify and build upon the material in any medium or format, as long as the rights holder is credited. The licence permits commercial use. If you modify or build upon the material, the adapted material must be licensed under the same licence.
- CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives) – The licence allows users to distribute the material in any medium or format in its original form, as long as the rights holder is credited. The licence permits commercial use.
- CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) – The licence allows users to distribute, modify and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is credited.
- CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) – The licence allows users to distribute, modify and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is credited. If you modify or build upon the material, the adapted material must be licensed under the same licence.
- CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) – The licence allows users to distribute the material in any medium or format in its original form and for non-commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is credited.
Creative Commons and open access
CC BY is the most frequently used license when publishing open access. CC BY is the most permissive Creative Commons licence and permits sharing, commercial reuse and adaptations of a publication, as long as the rights holder is credited and any changes are indicated.
CC BY is the default licence in many open access journals. Many funders also require publications they fund to be open access under a CC BY licence.
Researchers at UiB are in principle free to choose whichever licence they wish when publishing or making their publications available. Some publications may nonetheless be subject to a CC BY requirement from funders, or be published in journals that offer only this licence. When choosing more restrictive CC licences, it is important to consider which reuse you want to permit and which you want to prevent. Be aware that restrictions placed on the reuse of a publication may also prevent reuse you would consider legitimate.
Using others' work
The general rule is that you must obtain permission from the rights holder before using someone else's work. If the material has been published, the rights holder is often the publisher.
Exceptions:
- Private use (external link) – copying for your own use, or for family and friends.
- The right to quote (external link) – you may quote published works in accordance with proper usage and to the extent required by the purpose.
- Public domain – works no longer protected by copyright. In most countries, works enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the last author/creator. The rights to attribution and respect apply even after a work has entered the public domain.
- Open licence – material published under a Creative Commons (or similar) licence may be reused under the terms of the licence.
- Collective licence – there are rights organisations that manage collective licences on behalf of their members. Examples are Kopinor for text, TONO for music and BONO for visual art.