Open Access: Copyright

The first owner of copyright in a work is generally the author. Unless you transfer copyright to a publisher by signing a copyright transfer agreement or an exclusive licence to publish, you will retain copyright over the work.

Where you have transferred copyright to the publisher or another body, you can check the rights holder’s policy with regard to self-archiving in an open access institutional repository in the following ways:

• Review the copyright transfer agreement/ exclusive licence to publish/ copyright form that you signed during submission of your publication
• Check the SHERPA RoMEO database online which gives summaries of the permissions that are normally given as part of each journal publisher's copyright transfer agreement. RoMEO does not have information on all journal publishers but it is a good place to start.
• The publisher's own web site may give information on author’s rights or self-archiving permissions. See Taylor and Francis for example
• CORA staff will do a copyright check on publications once they have been uploaded to CORA.  Where copyright is not clear, CORA staff contact the rights holder on behalf of the author.

If you believe you have legitimate grounds to complain about any item in CORA, please notify us by e-mail on cora@ucc.ie

Legitimate grounds of complaint include a belief that inclusion of the item infringes your copyright or your moral rights or is defamatory or is otherwise unlawful.
In the e-mail please include the following information: Name, organisation, e-mail address, postal address, telephone number, reason for requesting withdrawal, title of the item/publication, link to the item on CORA.