Copyright for authors and creators
The Office for Research's Copyright Policy defines the copyright status of content created by Northwestern University faculty. The related Patent and Invention policy may also be of interest.
For some years, it has been common practice for many academic publishers to require authors to surrender copyright for books and journal articles as a condition of publication. Faculty are often surprised to discover that they may no longer own the copyright to their works. The CIC Provosts have approved an authors addendum (pdf), which can be attached to a publication agreement and retains specific rights, including the authors right to use the work professionally and publish it on a university web site after six months. For more information about authors rights, visit the Association of Research Libraries' SPARC Authors Resources site.
Finally, if you have created a work and you would like to encourage others to use it and share it, the Creative Commons project may be of interest. Creative Commons licenses allow a creator to simply identify the types of uses that are allowed and those that are prohibited. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license allows others to freely reuse the work for noncommercial purposes, and to create derivative works as long as they are also shared under the same terms.
