What Do I Own?

The Basics

• A copyright comes into existence the moment a copyrightable work is created - no registration is necessary for a copyright to exist;

• The copyright usually automatically belongs to the creator (or creators) of the work, including student creators;

• Works created by an employee of an organization, within the context of a commission or grant project, or as part of a collaboration with others can change and affect copyright ownership.

Works for Hire

Scholars may be surprised to learn that in addition to copyright law, College policy (or employer policy, more broadly) may affect ownership in works that are created as part of someone's job duties. The default rule of law is that the employer owns those kinds of works, called "works made for hire" in the law, but Macalester College has a policy stating faculty own their academic works, staff own their faculty-like creative works, and works of all employees (including student employees) that fall outside of that category are owned by the College. This policy is part of the Employee Handbook used by all faculty and staff.

Collaborative Works

Macalester encourages collaboration among faculty, students, and staff. However, all of the individuals who contribute to a collective effort may own copyrights in all or a part of the resulting works. Faculty and staff are encouraged to address copyright ownership in writing in a manner consistent with College policy before embarking on collaborative efforts, particularly if the intent is to publish the resulting work. Members of the Macalester community need to know about the rights they have in the works they create, and how to manage those rights in order to distribute those works via publishers or other means, while also retaining the rights that they themselves may need in order to make full use of their own works throughout their career.

Resources for Publishing 

The library has two resources that provide more information about the changing nature of scholarly and educational publishing, and how individuals can contribute. The Open Access site provides information about negotiating author rights, publishing in open journals and monographs, and funding programs to support these initiatives. The Open Educational Resources Toolkit gives information on how to create, remix, and reuse open education resources for teaching and learning, in and outside of the classroom. Consult with a Research & Instruction Librarian for more information about your options as a copyright holder.

In addition, the library also provides Digital Commons as publishing service to the Macalester community. DigitalCommons@Macalester includes all types of scholarship including student Honors projects, award-winning scholarship, working papers, and college-produced journals. Digital Commons is a permanent online archive that preserves and organizes materials. Any materials included in Digital Commons have a dedicated permanent URL that can be used in articles, books, and papers to refer back to the scholarship.

Students placing their materials in Digital Commons, retain the copyright for their works. Faculty and staff retain the copyright for works in accordance with the Macalester policy on Ownership of Copyrights in Works.