Rights

What needs to be considered?

As a rule, scientific publications are subject to copyright. If you would like to publish a work in the repository, you should therefore first make sure that you have the necessary rights. In particular, you need to think about any co-authors and about publishing companies to whom you may already have granted extensive rights of use.

Copyright advice

  • Make sure that your co-authors agree to the publication of the work in the repository. You should gain your co-authors’ binding consent.
  • If you have already published an article with a publishing company and would now like to publish it a second time via Leibniz Universität Hannover Institutional Repository, you must first check to see whether secondary publication is legally permissible. Generally, a secondary publication in the Institutional Repository is possible if:
    • You, as the author, have only assigned non-exclusive rights of use to the publishing company.
    • Your publishing agreement explicitly states that you may make your publication available on an institutional repository (self-archiving).
    • an Open Access component was negotiated with your publishing company in the context of the DFG-funded national and alliance licenses and Leibniz Universität Hannover is party to this national or alliance license via TIB.
    • The new statutory secondary publication right is applicable for your publication.
  • For initial information about the policies pursued by publishing companies with regard to Open Access, please refer to the SHERPA/RoMEO list.
  • When concluding publishing agreements, you can expressly reserve the necessary rights of use to allow for a secondary publication (see also open-access.net), e.g. by:
    • Making deletions/additions to the publishing agreement
    • Including a contract form to which reference is made in the publishing agreement
  • In order to publish your work in the repository, you must consent to the Deposit License. In addition to the publication in the repository, you still have the option of making use of the works yourself (e.g. by posting them on your website, sending them by e-mail, publishing them in a journal or book).
  • Following the (primary) publication of your work in the repository, you may still grant exclusive rights of use to your publication to third parties. Please note, that in case of a secondary publication by a publishing company while granting exclusive rights of use to the publishing company, the publishing company must be informed about the primary publication in the repository before concluding the agreement.
  • By awarding open licenses such as Creative Commons (see below), barriers hindering the use of scientific content can be removed. The Creative Commons license “CC Attribution 3.0 Germany”, compatible with Open Access principles, imposes the least amount of restrictions concerning follow-up use in research and teaching and simultaneously guarantees that the author has to be named. In the case of secondary publications, it is often no longer possible to award Creative Commons licenses if exclusive rights of use for the publication have already been granted to the publishing company. Publications that have already been published under a Creative Commons license can be published under the same license in the repository.

Licenses

Deposit License

To enable your publication to be accessible to the public via the repository, you must grant the operators of the repository (Leibniz Universität Hannover and TIB) a non-exclusive right of use for your publication – to make it available online in the repository. This is done by concluding a license agreement, called a Deposit License. You can consent to the Deposit License during the upload process online. The confirmation process is integrated in the repository’s workflow. Go to complete license.

Creative Commons Licenses

In addition to the rights of use given upon agreeing to the Deposit License, you can also grant additional rights of use to your publication to third parties via Creative Commons Licenses. While uploading the work to the repository, you can assign a Creative Commons License to your publication. The licencing process is integrated in the repository’s workflow. One of the following Creative Commons licenses can be selected:

It goes without saying that you can also grant other Creative Commons licenses. Where legally possible, we recommend granting the Creative Commons license “CC Attribution 3.0 Germany”, which is compatible with Open Access. This license imposes the least amount of restrictions for follow-up use in research and teaching, and simultaneously guarantees that the author has to be named.