Copyright

When you own the copyright to your creative endeavor and you are making it publicly accessible yourself, you may explicitly grant permissions for others to use your work under a Creative Commons License.  For further detail, please see Creative Commons Explained.  (The Creative Commons also offers an interactive tool to help you choose the appropriate license for your needs.) 

This is commonly referred to as making your work available "open access".  For detail on open access, see Cornell University's Guide to Open Access Publishing and also Open Educational Resources (from MHC).

To apply a CC license to your honors thesis, please see Electronic Honors Theses below.

If you wish to deposit a copy of your publication in the Mount Holyoke College Institutional Archive, please contact Digital Assets and Preservation at daps-d@mtholyoke.edu.

When you submit a text for publication, you will be asked to make decisions about your copyright which may include turning your copyright over to the publisher of your work.  As you choose a publisher (or choose among potential publishers), you are encouraged to think through the implications of their polices on the future reuse of your work.  Some publishers will facilitate open access options, but many will not.  The SHERPA/RoMEO database provides a searchable collection of publisher policies -- check here when deciding where to publish.  Unless addressed in the transfer agreement, you may be forbidden by the publisher to do the following:

• Post the work to your own web site or to a disciplinary online archive.
• Copy the work for distribution to students.
• Use the work as the basis for future articles or other works.
• Give permission for the work to be used in a course at Cornell.
• Grant permission to faculty and students at other universities to use the material.

 Resources to aid with publisher negotiations:

• Preserving Your Rights as an Author:  This page from Cornell University's Copyright Information Center provides different scenarios of copyright options for authors who are working with publishers.
• Science Commons' Scholars Copyright Addendum Engine:  A resource to generate PDF forms that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
• SPARC Author Addendum:  A legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles.
• The Big 10 Academic Alliance Author Addendum page (click on the link "Authors Copyright Contract Addenda" near the top of the page).
• List of Author Addenda at the Open Access Directory wiki.

If your license allows and you wish to deposit a copy of your publication in the Mount Holyoke College Institutional Archive, please contact Digital Assets and Preservation at daps-d@mtholyoke.edu.

Before submitting your honors thesis to LITS, please read Understanding Access Permissions.  This page explains the access and permissions options you can set for your e-thesis and any accompanying materials (such as supporting video or images).

You must discuss access and permissions with your thesis advisor, since he or she will be most familiar with your work. You, with the help of your advisor, will need to decide how others should access your thesis based on its content.