At Penn State, per policy IP01, copyright ownership of scholarly intellectual property generally rests with its creator. Scholarly intellectual property includes scholarly articles, which are the subject of the open access policy, AC02.
When you publish an article, it is common for the publisher to request a transfer or exclusive license of your copyright, via a publishing agreement. Some journals’ agreements allow you to deposit a post-print in ScholarSphere (or another open access repository) by the date of publication. Others do not.
If you are publishing with a journal whose default agreement conflicts with Penn State’s open access policy, you have two options: you can get an automatic waiver of the policy, or you can negotiate with your publisher to modify their default agreement.
To assist Penn State authors who seek to negotiate their publishing agreements, the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright has prepared an Author’s Addendum. This Addendum is designed for scholarly articles, not books, book chapters, or other types of works.
With questions, please contact the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright.