Researcher Compass

A clear example illustrating the implications of copyright infringement is the case of Diego Gomez. Gomez shared articles on a personal server, making them openly accessible via a personal webpage, which resulted in a lawsuit for copyright infringement. Likewise, in 2017, two publishers (American Chemical Society and Elsevier) sued ResearchGate for allegedly violating US copyright laws by hosting research papers uploaded by users on the site. Although these cases were eventually dismissed/settled, it is important to acknowledge the potential legal risks and consequences associated with such actions when using personal websites and academic social networks.

Notably, academic publisher Elsevier has issued numerous "take-down notices" against academics who have posted copies of their own articles online. The University of California has notified its faculty about this development, providing an explanation and advice regarding the situation.

To ensure compliance with copyright laws and publisher policies, we recommend researchers do the following before posting any final published versions of their works on personal websites or social platforms:

1. Review publisher policies: Locate the agreements (if any) that authors have signed with the publishers. Check their guidelines on sharing content and any restrictions or permissions they have in place. For example, the journal “Optics Communications” allows its articles to be openly accessible only after an open access publication fee (i.e. APC) has been paid; for articles published with a subscription model (i.e. No open access publication fee), their final published versions are not allowed to be disseminated via platforms other than the publisher’s site.
2. Consider self-archiving option (i.e. Green OA): Many publishers allow authors to share their work, usually the accepted author manuscript (also called postprints) or the author’s original manuscript (also called the preprints) through institutional repositories or preprint servers. This self-archiving action ensures compliance with copyright requirements while still making the authors’ research accessible. This is what the Library is currently doing with our Green OA Self-Archiving Exercise.

Copyright and OA policies of publishers vary. In case of doubt, please visit the publishers’ websites to check. Should the Library be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at lbopen@cityu.edu.hk. We are happy to help.