Research & Scholarly Publications Team: Data Management Policies and DMPs

This page provides general guidance rather than legal advice - please follow the University web​links provided for further support and advice.​

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) (e.g. copyright, patents, etc) affect the way both you and others can use your research outputs.

Failure to clarify rights at the start of the research process can lead to unexpected limitations to:

• your research,
• its dissemination,
• future related research projects, and
• associated profit or credit.

It can also cause you legal trouble.

Further information on IPR can be found on the University's IPR webpages

Frequently Asked Questions

Are research data or data derivatives protected by copyright law?

Copyright law sometimes protects data and other research products (provided that you share them with the proper copyright statement or end-user agreement), but it depends on the nature of your data or files.

The University has a Copyright webpage, which provides information and contacts for who to consult on copyright questions in various situations (e.g. research grants and funding, commercialisation and intellectual property, etc).

A seminar was held in 2011 (hosted by CRASHH and the Incremental Project). Andrew Charlesworth (Centre for IT & Law, University of Bristol) gave a presentation that addressed some copyright issues:

'Intellectual Property Rights and Research Data - Focus on copyright' [32 mins 6 secs].

He also participated in a short interview on the same subject [2 mins 34 secs].

What are my intellectual property rights with regard to research data at Coventry University?

This depends on whether you are a student, post-doc, PI/project director, your relationship with the University, your role in the project, and your agreement with other parties (funders, study participants, corporate partners, etc).  Advice can be sought via the University's webpages and by contacting colleagues listed below, under the 'Who can help me with Copyright and IPR?' question.

Can I use materials that I find online?

It depends on how those materials are licensed. IPR is usually in play, even if you don't see a "©" or 'all rights reserved' notice. When in doubt, contact the University Copyright Officer (contact information in FAQ below) for advice, or ask the website administrator or publisher who distributed the content for permission directly.

The Web2Rights project has produced a useful IPR & Legal Issues Toolkit for the web.

How can I make it easier for others to re-use the materials that I produce?

One relatively simple way to make it easier for others to re-use tools, data, or other content that you produce is to add a Creative Commons license.

For example ‘By-Attribution, Non-Commercial’ is a common Creative Commons license – when you mark your file, image, or information with this, it means that anyone can use your information in any way they like, so long as they attribute it to you and don’t use it for commercial purposes. Creative Commons licenses are often used for materials released online, but you can also include these in printed materials if you don't have a publisher who owns the rights. For additional information and Creative Commons license options, visit the www.creativecommons.org.

To license something with a Creative Commons license, you don't need to file any paperwork -- just publish (in print or on the web) your materials along with a notification that you are using a particular license.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Creative Commons licenses are 'irrevocable' so don't add a Creative Commons license unless you are sure that (1) you have the right to publish this information, and (2) you won't want to re-voke it later on for any reason.

Who can help me with Copyright and IPR?

For information on Copyright, please contact:

Phil Brab​ban​

University Librarian and Group Director of Learning Resources,​ LIB

Telephone:  024 7688 7519

E-mail:  p.brabban@coventry.ac.uk

For general questions on IPR or to discuss Intellectual Proper​​ty Disclosure Forms, contact:

Mandy Tipple

Business Development Support Office

Mobile: 07974 98 4387

E-mail: ipr@coventry.ac.uk

Director of IP Services

Brian More

Mobile: 07974 98 4928

E-mail: ipr@coventry.ac.uk

For questions touching on commercialisation, contact:

Tim Francis

IPR Commercialisation Manager

Mobile: 07557 42 5047

E-mail: ipr@coventry.ac.uk

What rights do other people have to request my work - i.e. Freedom of Information Act (FOI)?

The Freedom of Information Act of 2000 (FOIA) gives all members of the public the right to request any information produced with public money, but there are some exemptions.

For information about FOI at Coventry, see the CU FOI page.

Further Reading

Web2Rights IPR & Legal Issues Toolkit Information on intellectually property rights pertaining to Web 2.0 internet resources.

Alex Ball has created a presentation for the Digital Curation Centre/University of Bath on Derestricting Datasets: How to License Research Data

As members of a publicly-funded university, you may receive requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) or Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). 

Deadline
Once the University has received an information request, it has 20 working days to respond to an FOI request and up to 40 for an EIR request. Both FOI and EIR include a number of exemptions and exceptions respectively against disclosure.  This is because the legislation recognised that not all official information ought to be disclosed.  For example to protect information such as confidential, sensitive data or personal information. If you are unsure about disclosure, consult the University's FOI officer foia@coventry.ac.uk.

Glossary

• Advance Online Publication - Some publishers enable articles to be published online as soon as they have been fully copy-edited and proof-checked, ahead of the final, ‘printed’ version. This version of the article is in exactly the same format as they appear in the final issue except for page numbering. Any embargo periods pertaining to Open Access start from this release date. Also known as Early or First online publication.

• Article Processing Charge (APC) - Fee which may be payable to the publisher to publish via the gold open access route. When an article is published in a traditional subscription journal, the author pays an APC to make their individual article freely available from the journal website, without restriction or charge to the reader.

• Bibliographic Record - The bibliographic description of a digital publication. Search engines crawl the internet to find documents and, depending on the quality of the metadata, they list the 'hits'. The high-quality metadata for items deposited in repositories enables the documents to be easily discoverable. Also known as Publication record or Metadata.

• CC-BY Licence - Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This is the most liberal of the CC licences. As long as the original author(s) receives attribution, this allows anyone to copy, distribute or transmit the research, adapt the research and make commercial use of the research. RCUK requires this licence is used if the gold open access route is selected. The Wellcome Trust encourage its use, and will cover the costs of any APC where an article is published under this licence.

• COAF - Charity Open Access Fund - Comprised of six medical research charities - Arthritis Research UK, Breast Cancer Campaign, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, and the Wellcome Trust. Research funded by any of these charities must meet their Open Access requirements. See COAF (Wellcome Trust).

• Corresponding Authors - The author responsible for manuscript correction, correspondence during submission, handling of revisions and re-submission of the revised manuscript. On acceptance of the manuscript, the corresponding author is responsible for co-ordinating any application for payment of a Gold Open Access Article Processing Charge (APC).

• Creative Commons Licences - Creative Commons licences can be used in open access publishing to help authors retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make use of their work. There are several different Creative Commons licences, which allow different types of re-use. See the Creative Commons website.

• Curve open - CURVE Open is the University's repository for educational resources and open access items other than research publications. The aim of this open access institutional repository is to showcase University research and teaching, increasing accessibility to, and raising the visibility of our authors work.

• DOI - Digital Object Identifier - A unique identifier for an online document, used by most online journal publishers. As the DOI is unique to the publication, linking to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL.

• Embargo Period - An embargo in academic publishing is a period during which access to a research publication self-archived in an open access repository (Green open access) is restricted. The purpose of this is usually to protect the revenue of publishers who rely on subscription payments to cover the costs of publication.

• Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) - A life sciences and biomedical research subject repository. The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and most other UK biomedical funders require copies of funded articles to be deposited in Europe PMC within 6 months of publication. The USA-based PubMed Central is the repository containing global content

• Gold Open Access - The full text of the article is instantly available to anyone without a subscription or viewing fee from the publisher's website. The author may need to pay an "article processing charge" (APC) to the publisher.

• Green Open Access - Author publishes in a traditional, subscription based journal and a copy of the research (usually the author’s final, peer-reviewed manuscript – sometimes referred to as a post-print) is deposited in either an institutional or subject repository, usually at the point of publication. No APC is paid to the publisher. Following any embargo period set by the publisher the manuscript is then made free to access. The published final version of the journal sits behind a subscription pay wall on the journal website, while the "post-print" copy is available to anyone from the repository.

• Hybrid Open Access - When an article is published in a traditional subscription journal, but where the author pays an APC to make their individual article freely available from the journal website, without restriction or charge to the reader. This means that some articles in that journal will only be available to subscribers whereas others (where the author has paid an APC) will be freely available to everyone

• Institutional Repository - Online digital archive of an institution’s research publications. Previously, CU hosted CURVE Open, however  in Spring 2017 there will be a managed transition to a PURE based repository for publications.

• Open Access - Open access is the practice of providing free, unlimited online access to scholarly works and research outputs in a digital format, with limited restrictions on re-use. A key driver behind OA has been to make publicly-funded research accessible to tax-payers.

• Pre-print - This is usually defined as the author's final draft of a paper before peer-review. It is also often referred to as the author's submitted manuscript. Many publishers allow authors to place the pre-print in a repository. However, pre-print versions do not normally meet funder requirements.

• Post-print - Refers to the final draft author manuscript, as accepted for publication, including modifications based on referees' suggestions but before it has undergone copy-editing and proof correction. It is often referred to as the author's accepted manuscript. The post-print version is the one that should ideally be deposited in the CU institutional repository in order to meet REF and funder requirements.

• Published PDF - The formatted PDF file that appears in the journal. This version will be the publisher's copy-edited PDF with final page numbers, typesetting and journal branding included. Many publishers will not allow you to self-archive the published version unless you have paid an APC to make the paper openly available immediately (gold route).

• Publisher Agreement - When you publish your paper you will probably sign a 'publisher agreement’. This document states your rights as an author, so it is always worthwhile keeping a copy. On the publisher agreement it should state whether you can make your article available on CU intuitional repository.

• RCUK (Research Councils UK) Mandates - RCUK policy is that all research funded by them should be freely and immediately available. The RCUK preference is for gold OA, but they do support a mixed approach; the decision on which OA route to follow is taken by the individual author/institution. If the gold route is not available or appropriate, RCUK requires green deposit for a funded research output within 0-12 months of publication (see embargo). The AHRC require funded research-level theses to be OA within 12 months.

• REF - Research Excellence Framework - The Research Excellence Framework is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). The next REF is in 2021. To be eligible for the next REF, staff will have to meet open access requirements. These must be met at the time papers are accepted for publication. To access the HEFCE policy for REF 2021 click here.

• Wellcome Trust Mandates - The Wellcome Trust supports unrestricted access to publications wholly or partly funded by them. The outputs must be made available in PubMed Central or Europe PubMed Central within 6 months of final publications. They will provide grant-holders (via their institution) with additional funding to cover OA charges where appropriate.