This may sound like a really dumb question, but can I post in entirety relevant material that I, myself, hold the copyright to? I have published at least 20 technical papers, and have co-authored a major technical report (in my field) that appears in many engineering libraries. Do I have to give some sort of special notice if I am the author?
Just those words “I am the author” ought to simplify life all around.
BTW, why don’t you start a thread now, since you have us wondering what you’ve written? This is a good board to strut your stuff on.
Anthracite, it would depend on what rights you sold to those articles. You need to look at your contracts and see what they say. You can hold the copyright but not have the right to reproduce the article in certain or any formats. I’m more familiar with the reversion clauses for books than for articles.
If you sold the rights to the articles, then I don’t think that I am the author is going to cut it. When you sell the work, you retain copyright but the right to reproduce the work passes to the buyer. There are various reproduction rights and often (particularly for articles) the writer will retain some of these.
Bottom line - check your contract and ask the editor who bought the work.
Well, that is a tough question. Many of the technical papers were presented at conferences, and I and a great many others have been able to re-use their papers without incurring threats of lawsuits, etc. But I’m not certain, I admit, who owns it, when I was never paid to do the presentation, and I never signed anything that gave rights away. Can I “implicitly” give my rights away by agreeing to attend? An interesting question…
Well from what I know of copyright law, if you didn’t sign anything and simply presented info at a conference, then yeah you own all rights to those articles.
If you signed nothing, were paid nothing and gave no undertaking to only use those articles in one particular setting then no way does anyone else own the article.
So by publishing did you mean that the papers were published in conference proceedings? AFAIK that doesn’t give the conference organisers the right to restrict you from publishing the same paper elsewhere.
Yes, except for the one big technical report, which was an actual published book…err…work. Whatever you want to call it. That one I’m sure I don’t have the rights to…
I would think if you are the copyright holder you have the right to refer to said work in any discussion you have here. We would prefer that people not reproduce such works in their entirely, mostly for considerations of space. As stated before, quotes are good, links are good. Being concise is best. Make your point and move on.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
You can’t reproduce the entire work legally even if you hold the copyright. You can refer to your work but the reproduction rights belong to the edior/publisher who bought the rights. AFAIK the writer has no more rights of reproduction than is granted under the fair use provisions.
My SO has a website about his books. He can post paragraphs from his books but he can’t put up entire books or even chapters without permission from the publisher. Even using the covers needed permission from the publisher.
This is getting into nit-picky territory, but I think it’s important to avoid getting anyone into trouble.
Authors of scientific papers virtually never retain copyright, whether they have paid page charges or not. (Primaflora, in the the world of science publishing scientists are not paid for their submissions to professional journals, but in fact usually have to pay page charges to defray the cost of printing. This charge is independent of any decision about whether a manuscript is worth publishing.) The publishers usually say that copyright transfer to them eases subsequent distribution in a variety of formats, yadda yadda, yadda. At the time a paper is accepted, the lead author must sign a form granting copyright transfer to the publisher (co-author’s signatures are not needed).
Conference convenors that publish a volume of abstracts (e.g., the Geological Society of America) automatically hold copyright on the compilation; the original authors do not retain the copyright to their own particular submission.
In either of the above examples, fair use rules generally permit an author to make a very limited number of copies for distribution outside the classroom, and state that a modest payment of some sort should be paid to the Copyright Clearance Center for any copies made beyond the limit.
Exceptions to the above copyright rules: NO ONE may claim copyright on work prepared by a government employee within the context of their employment. Publications by government agencies (at least in the US) are also not subject to copyright.
A good rule of thumb: if the abstract or paper appears in a publication that has an ISBN or ISSN number, the publisher holds the copyright, not the author.
thanks Fillet! I don’t think that was nitpicking at all.
Thanks, that’s good to know.
(Our policies still hold.) 
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator