Author Rights – Conclusion

In the Open Access – Author Rights chapters, you have explored author rights, focusing on how authors are protected, or in the case of traditional knowledge, are not protected under copyright; the ways in which authors sign over their rights; and strategies to negotiate with authors when dealing with publisher agreements.

Canadian copyright for literary, artistic, and musical works must meet the criteria of originality, fixation, and the creator is a Canadian citizen, resident of Canada, or another treaty country. As the copyright owner of your work, you are allowed to reproduce your work, create new works based on the original, share however you would like, perform or display your work in public, and transfer your rights to a third party. As an author, when transferring your rights to a third party, you sign a publisher agreement, a legal contracts that transfers some or all of the rights in your work to the publisher. These agreements can have consequences for your copyright and how you can use your work in the future. Negotiating with publishers using such tools as author addendums provides you with an opportunity to maintain rights over your work that are of importance to you.

While sharing your work in the open allows you to set the rules around how your work can be used by others, priorities set forward in promotion and tenure processes, academic conventions in your field, and considerations related to the potential financial benefits to your findings (e.g. patents), are considerations that need to be evaluated before engaging in open.

Indigenous cultural heritage and identity is expressed through creative works like storytelling, song, dance, rituals, and practices and is connected to land and community across time. Canadian Copyright Act, as it is currently structured, does not adequately account for traditional knowledge due to the focus of copyright on economic benefits, individual creators, and the time-based nature of protections.

Finally, with the introduction of GenerativeAI the Copyright Act  will need to address complex issues  related to authorship and originality While legal scholars and the Canadian government grapple with these questions, publishing practices and workflows will continue to develop as policy and legislative reforms lag.