In this article, you can read about the considerations you have to make about copyright before sharing your research results and publications.

Introduction

Collaboration is important in research, and being able to share and communicate your research results is essential. Sharing has never been so easy: there are many online platforms and social media to share your publications, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, X, LinkedIn. Before you share, you need to make sure you have taken copyright into consideration.

Can I publish a PDF of my paper on ResearchGate, Academia.edu or ScholarMate?

You may always share a link to your research output on platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or ScholarMate. However, you may share a PDF of your research output only:

• If you are the work’s copyright owner and the work is not limited by contractual agreements (e.g. regarding confidentiality),
• if you have the owner’s permission, or
• if a statutory exemption applies (e.g. for personal use or in accordance with the Taverne amendment).

In most cases, however, copyright of research papers, reports or books is transferred to the publisher. Therefore, you should check if the publisher’s conditions allow you to share your paper or other research output. These conditions might be written down in the Author Rights document. In many cases, publishers allow sharing of your paper’s postprint or preprint version, sometimes after an embargo. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can check if you may share versions of your research paper.

You may also not be allowed to personally share your paper with a colleague by e-mail. If someone requests a PDF of your paper, please verify that you are entitled to do so, or otherwise send the link to your paper on the publisher’s website.

May I share research publications through Mendeley?

The general rule is that only the copyright owner has the right to express, publish, display, distribute and copy his or her work. As long as you are the copyright owner, you may share your publications through Mendeley. However, if your paper is published in a journal, you most likely transferred the copyright to the publisher. You should therefore check if the publisher’s conditions allow sharing your papers through Mendeley. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can check if you may share versions of your paper.

May I share research publications through social media?

You may always share a link to your research output on Facebook, X, LinkedIn or other social media. However, you may share a PDF of your research only

• if you are the work’s copyright owner and the work is not limited by contractual agreements (e.g. regarding confidentiality),
• if you have the owner’s permission, or
• if a statutory exemption applies (e.g. for personal use or in accordance with the Taverne amendment).

In most cases, however, copyright of research papers, reports, or books is transferred to the publisher, and therefore, you should check if the publisher’s conditions in the Journal Author Rights allow sharing your paper or other research results on social media. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can check if you may share versions of your research paper through social media.

May I share research output on my personal website?

You may always share a link to your research output on your personal website. However, you may share a PDF of your research output only:

• if you are the work’s copyright owner and the work is not limited by contractual agreements (e.g. regarding confidentiality),
• if you have the owner’s permission, or
• if a statutory exemption applies (e.g. for personal use or in accordance with the Taverne amendment).

In most cases, however, copyright of research papers, reports, or books is transferred to the publisher, and therefore, you should check if the publisher’s conditions in the Journal Author Rights allow sharing your paper or other research results on social media. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can check if you may share versions of your research paper on your personal website.

May I share research output in a repository?

The general rule is that only the copyright owner has the right to express, publish, display, distribute and copy his or her work. As long as WUR or you are the copyright owner, you may share your publications in a repository, such as Research@WUR, or platforms, such as Shareyourpaper.org.

If you published your work with closed access, behind a paywall, you most likely transferred the copyright to the publisher. In that case, you may still share a version of your article in the WUR repository, free of charge, by:

• Using the Taverne Amendment. For more information, go to Taverne Amendment.
• If the Taverne Amendment is not an option, you can self-archive the peer reviewed and accepted version, the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in Research@WUR after the embargo period set by the publisher. See the explanation in this article for the exact workflow.
• If your work has been funded by Plan S funders, e.g. NWO or Horizon Europe, you may be allowed to open up a version of your manuscript by using the Rights Retention Strategy. Conditions apply; please check this FAQ.

Do I need to consider copyright law when sharing the dataset of my MSc thesis?

If applicable, WUR students own the copyright of a dataset that they created during the MSc thesis project. However, most data are factual, and factual data have no copyright protection. In many cases, WUR or another organisation provide a dataset to the student. In this situation, the data could be/are owned by WUR and/or another organisation. If the data has restricted use, (e.g. the data cannot be used by another university or shared with others), these restrictions should be stated in the thesis agreement and the agreement should be signed by the student. Please also check these policies about publishing and sharing data.  

After publishing my PhD thesis, may I publish a chapter as a journal article?

If you submit manuscripts (chapters of your PhD thesis) to a journal after your thesis has been submitted and made publicly available through Wageningen University & Research PhD theses, you may receive an email from the publisher stating that your manuscript cannot be accepted because of plagiarism. To prevent this, you need to place an embargo on your thesis. Please email media.library@wur.nl to request an embargo before you submit your thesis. During the 1-year embargo, your thesis will not be available online and will not appear in plagiarism-detection software. You may also extend the embargo if needed.

After publishing a journal article, may I include this article in my PhD thesis?

During the paper submission process, you may be asked to transfer your copyright to the publisher. If you must transfer all your rights, it is important to retain the right to publish this article as a chapter in your PhD thesis or the right to use this article in education. If you did not arrange this with the journal during the paper submission process, it will depend on the journal whether you are allowed to publish the article as a thesis chapter. Please check the publisher’s copyright statement or the contract you have signed to see if you may publish the paper in your thesis.

In some cases, you may publish the paper’s postprint or preprint version in your thesis. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can check if you may publish the paper in your PhD thesis.

What should I do when someone asks permission to use my research output?

WUR authors may be asked for permission to use their publications. The requester may be the Copyright Clearance Centre or another organisation or individual. If you receive a request, please contact the legal officers of your Science Group.

May I share conference talks or educational material?

WUR owns the copyright on all conference presentations created by its employees. Only WUR has the exclusive right to reproduce the work, to make the work publicly available or to put a CC-licence on the work.WUR owns the copyright on educational materials created by its employees. Copyright on educational materials, such as lecture materials, PowerPoint slide shows, video recordings of lectures, course guides and other educational materials is vested solely in WUR. In short, only WUR has the exclusive right to reproduce the work or to make the work publicly available. For more information, see the knowledge article on Ownership & Licences.

May I share my authors preprint on a preprint service?

The general rule is that only the copyright owner has the right to express, publish, display, distribute and copy his or her work. As long as you are the copyright owner, you may share your publications through a preprint server. However, if your paper is published in a journal, you most likely transferred the copyright to the publisher. You should therefore check if the publisher’s conditions in the Journal Author Rights allow sharing your papers through a preprint service provider. On the Open Policy Finder (formerly SHERPA/RoMEO) website, you can also check if you may share your preprint through a preprint service provider. In some cases, you may, for example, only share your preprint on non-commercial preprint servers.

Questions & Support 

Do you have questions about this service, or would you like personal support? Feel free to contact us. You can send an email to the Copyright Information Point.