Copyright
While, from a copyright point of view, the first publication of original articles in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository is generally unproblematic, questions regularly arise about the permissibility of secondary publications of contributions that have already appeared in printed or electronic form in monographic collections, including festschrifts, encyclopaedias, congress volumes and handbooks as well as subscription journals, yearbooks and newspapers.
Secondary publication rights as a gesture of goodwill
The SHERPA/RoMEO directory supports you in clarifying your secondary publication rights and is seamlessly integrated into the upload procedure of CrossAsia Open Access Repository. It documents the conditions of numerous international academic publishers and individual journals with regard to a possible secondary publication in OA and classifies them according to a four-part typology. The spectrum ranges from publishers who refuse non-commercial secondary publication on institutional or disciplinary repositories on principle, to journals whose content is approved for OA publication in the manuscript version accepted for printing or even in the actual publisher's layout. Please note that any deviating agreements in your respective publishing contract remain in any case unaffected by the legally non-binding specifications of the SHERPA/RoMEO directory.
Secondary publication rights that can be waived.
If, however, no explicit publishing contract has been concluded, the provisions of paragraphs one and two of Section 38 UrhG (German Copyright Act), which was amended with effect from 1 January 2014, must be given priority in this context. These provisions apply to non-remunerated publications in monographic, non-periodical collections - such as handbooks, encyclopaedias, festschrifts or congress volumes - as well as to publications in journals and yearbooks. According to this standard, although in case of doubt the publisher acquires an exclusive right of use for the reproduction, dissemination and making available to the public of a corresponding work, you may nevertheless make secondary use of your contribution elsewhere and thus also on CrossAsia Open Access Repository, after an embargo period of twelve months - subject to the proviso that nothing else has been agreed upon with the publisher concerned.
Indispensable right of secondary publication
If your academic article was written as part of a research activity that was publicly funded with at least fifty percent and published in a collection that appears periodically at least twice a year, you can benefit from the amended restrictions in Section 38 (4) UrhG that came into force on 1 January 2014. Even if you have granted a publisher the exclusive right of use to such a contribution and have made other agreements to your disadvantage, you are, on the basis of this standard, nevertheless free to make the work publicly accessible in the accepted manuscript version - i.e., not in the publisher's layout - after twelve months have elapsed since the first publication, provided this does not serve any commercial purpose. Please also refer to the FAQ prepared by the Alliance of German Science Organisations on the indispensable right of secondary publication and the corresponding recommendations for action issued by iRights.Lab.
Open Access component of the Alliance-, National- and FID-licences
Irrespective of the scope of action outlined in the German Copyright Act, you may also be entitled to make binding use of those OA rights to your work that have been negotiated by alliance- and national-licences or by the specialist information services for science and scholarship responsible for the respective disciplines. For the various international journal packages of the so-called Alliance-, National- and FID-licences acquired with the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for example, it is generally possible to upload the content contained therein in the manuscript version accepted for printing, and often even in the publisher's layout, to a repository of your choice - i.e., also to CrossAsia Open Access Repository - after a varying embargo period has ended. To check without obligation whether the journal articles you intend to republish in CrossAsia Open Access Repository fall within the scope of the Open Access components of the Alliance-, National- or FID-licences, please consult this overview which covers all disciplines.
CrossAsia Open Access Repository or Open Content Licence?
By uploading your document to our server and on the basis of the written publication contract, you grant CrossAsia Open Access Repository a non-exclusive right of use to reproduce, distribute and make your work publicly available on the internet, as well as, in addition, the right to make changes to the respective file format, in particular for archiving purposes (CrossAsia Open Access Repository licence). However, based on this CrossAsia Open Access Repository Licence, use by third parties of your contribution published in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository is only permitted within the framework of German copyright law - particularly with regard to reproduction for academic, private and other personal use (Sections 53, 60c, 60d of the German Copyright Act). If, on the other hand, you would like to enable a more extensive use of your work, CrossAsia, in agreement with the Alliance of German Science Organisations, recommends that you grant a Creative Commons licence, with which you can release your contributions in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository, e.g., for editing and redistribution by third parties. Please note that Creative Commons or other open content licences can generally only be granted for first-time publications in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository and that such licences can only be granted for works to which you have the exclusive right of use. In all other cases, the consent of the publisher concerned must be obtained prior to free licensing. However, all descriptive bibliographic metadata published in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository – with the exception of abstracts – are available for free reuse under the CC0 1.0 Universal Licence.
Support and Contact
Upon request, the CrossAsia Open Access Repository team will assist you in clarifying your secondary publication rights and will also be happy to help you with any questions you may have about OA publishing. Please find our contact details here. Irrespective of whether or not you make use of this advisory service, you are in any case obliged, before publishing in the CrossAsia Open Access Repository, to ascertain that the rights of use to be granted to CrossAsia, in particular for making your work publicly accessible, actually belong to you. CrossAsia Open Access Repository in particular reserves the right to block access to documents that have already been published in cases relevant under criminal law.