Permissions Assistance for the Aquila Digital Community
We welcome all faculty, students, and other members of the University of Southern Mississippi community to submit their scholarly works to the Aquila Digital Community. However, if these works have already been published in a journal or other publication, you may need to secure copyright permissions before we can post them. The following are some helpful strategies for securing permissions:
Obtain Permission – In many cases, publishers are willing to grant an author permission to upload previously submitted works to an institutional repository. To determine your publisher’s specific policy you may check the following websites:
Where deposit of the full text is not possible due to copyright restrictions, a citation, abstract and descriptive information including a link to an alternative location such as the publisher’s version may be added. It may also be possible to work with your publisher to re-gain these rights. While we are happy to guide you in the process of contacting the publisher, we have found that it is far more effective when authors contact their publishers directly. Here is a sample permissions letter.
Retain Rights – Many publishers will allow you to retain some of your rights upon submission of new works. In particular, most major publishers will allow authors to retain the right to provide open access to their published works after a brief (usually 6 months to a year) embargo period. For more details on how to retain your rights as an author, see this guide to publication agreements from the Columbia University Copyright Advisement Office.
Your Rights and the USM Aquila Digital Collections – Once you have secured the proper permissions, you are welcome to submit your work to the Aquila Digital Community. When submitting work, please be sure to add the permission statement in the document. By submitting your work, you are granting the University Libraries a royalty-free and non-exclusive worldwide license to include your work and all associated abstracts, tables of contents, reference lists, and metadata within the Aquila Digital Community. Works deposited in the Aquila Digital Community are electronically stored and disseminated for educational purposes only; this license in no way allows the works to be used for commercial purposes. With the exclusion of this limited license, copyright or any intellectual property rights associated with deposited works remain with the contributor or copyright holder if that entity is separate from the contributor. If submission contains the input from others, the contributor represents that appropriate permission was gained from the copyright owner. If submission is based on or part of work supported by another entity, the contributor represents that she/he has fulfilled all obligations required by such contract or agreement. Contributors agree to share their work and waive any privacy rights granted by international, federal, state, or local law, policy, or regulation with respect to works within the deposit. No modification of this agreement can be made unless submitted in writing and signed by both parties.
For previously published works (journal articles, book chapters, etc.) for which the publisher retains copyright, permission has been granted (where necessary) to post this material on the Aquila Digital Community. For any use that exceeds personal use or the terms of Fair Use, the copyright owner of the material may require permission. When submitting work, please be sure to add the permission statement in the document.
Except as provided above, or for any other use that is allowed by Fair Use (Title 17, §107 U.S.C.), you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any Material from this web site in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner of the Material.
For more information on copyright and obtaining permissions, see the following resource guides:
