Publishing
Open Access

Copyright law

According to Copyright law, the creator of an elaboration is its author (UrhG §7). (S)he holds the individual copyright and may concede usage and processing rights on her/his elaboration.

• Individual copyright: emerges automatically by the creation of an individual intellectual creation and is irreversible, indispensable and non-transferable. The labelling with a copyright note or the mark © is not necessary but may be useful for additional emphasis of the authorship.
• Usage rights (e.g. publication and dissemination, public access): may be conceded
  • temporarily limited or unlimited
  • geographically restricted or unrestricted
  • simply or exclusively
  • for all kinds of usage of just for determined kinds of usage

Information platform regarding Open Access: What is regulated by the copyright law and which rights do I have as author?

Copyright limits permit further kinds of usage

• Citation right §51 UrhG (German) Elaborations or parts of elaborations may be integrated in a scope according to the intended purpose. There has to be a differentiation between major citation and minor citation. The citation serves at the emphasis or consideration of the own theses and arguments or as instrument for rhetorical design. In the end, a new autonomous academic elaboration has to be created. The source has to be clearly indicated.
• Legal limit for secondary publications

Since 2014, the new paragraph §38 (4) UrhG (German) of the Copyright law is in force permitting under certain conditions to release elaborations as secondary publications even though this right was not provided by the time of primary publication. Contributions within serial publications (periodicals and collections released at least two times a year) or elaborations derived from a research project which was at least publically funded for the half may be published Open Access by the authors after a year. Exclusively the approved manuscript version may be secondarily published for non-commercial purposes. The original source has to be indicated and co-authors have to be asked for their consent.