Copyright

According to the Norwegian Copyright Act (Åndsverkloven), the basic criteria for claiming copyright protection of your work are:

1. The work has to be literary or artistic, e.g. a book, a thesis, an article, a map, a drawing or a painting. Note that the notions of “literary or artistic” include scholarly, non-fictional writing.
2. The work has to be original and creative. You cannot copy the whole or parts of somebody else’s work and render it as your own.
3. The work has to be fixed in some form, such as a written text, an illustration, a figure, etc. Copyright protects the expression, and not the idea itself.

When a work is created, the creator automatically gets copyright. There are no requirements for registering or marking the work as copyright.

You have to contribute to the work as it is made public in order to claim copyright. The copyright holder must make a substantial contribution to the actual writing of a text; contribution in other ways (supervision or other kinds of feed-back; project management) does not count as authorship under copyright law. If there are two or more authors whose individual contributions to a work cannot be separated, they acquire the copyright jointly.

Copyright is connected to human persons, only they can create intellectual, creative work (åndsverk). Texts generated by artificial intelligence, by contrast, are not protected by copyright, and they are automatically in the public domain. And even though they are partially the results of your prompts, they are created by machines, not by persons. You cannot therefore claim them as your own.

While examples of Chat GPT being listed as a “co-author” in articles exist, as a rule, journals and publishers do not currently accept AI tools as co-authors. For instance, the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) states that “AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper [...] as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work.” 

Copyrights are made up of moral rights and economic rights, which in sum make up the exclusive rights to a work. Moral rights include the right to be credited by name as the creator of your work, and the right to be safeguarded against offensive or disloyal use or presentation of your work. These rights cannot be transferred. Rights that can be transferred, however, are the economic rights to a work. These include:

• reproduction, e.g. paper copying or digital archiving
• distribution, e.g. sending a document to others through e-mail
• public performance, e.g. presenting parts of a paper at a conference
• communication to the public, e.g. posting an article on the Internet
• transformation, e.g. a translation of a book

These rights depend on:

• the transfer of rights by contract: work performed in an employment relationship or signed away to a publisher. For example, a clause in your employment contract stating that your PhD dissertation has to be made available in the institutional repository ('green' open access) or your funding organization has an open access policy included in their contract, stating that your work has to be made freely available online in an open archive.
• the term of copyright: usually the term of copyright lasts 50 or 70 years after the year of death of the last author of the work. After this period the work falls into the public domain, meaning that it is free to use by anyone (but the author still has to be acknowledged).
• the transfer of rights by inheritance: if the author dies, the rights to reuse the work might pass on to relatives, as long as the work has not yet fallen into the public domain.

A publisher or a journal often requires you to transfer your economic rights to them. Open access policies or clauses in your employment contract or funding agreements could prohibit full transfer of copyright. You may have to modify the terms of copyright in the publishing agreement.

If you transfer your copyright to your article to the journal, you should ask the following questions:

• Can you post the article on your own website?
• Can you post the article on the social networking website (Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Kudos, Mendeley, etc.)?
• Can you present the article at a conference?
• Can you publish your article together with the rest of your PhD in a book?

Different publishers offer different terms and conditions. Most journals permit a form of self-archiving of your article in an open online archive ('green' open access). This is often the 'post-print' version of your article, i.e. the version revised after the peer review process, but before the final, published version. If your institution has a rights retention policy, you are free to ignore any embargo periods imposed by the publisher. 

If you write an article-based dissertation, you have the copyright to the introductory chapter. However, you may have to check the copyright policies for each journal you publish your articles in before you make them available in the institutional archive. The library at your institution can help you to find out whether the entire dissertation can be openly published or not.

Academic institutions worldwide are increasingly introducing right retentions policies, beginning with Harvard University in 2008. With these policies the institutions give their researchers the right and support to make their articles openly accessible in institutional archives as soon as they have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in a journal, regardless of any limitations (for instance embargo periods) with which journals and publishers may operate. With such policies you are free to choose where to publish while still being able to meet open access requirements.

Right retention policies enable the publication of post-print versions of accepted articles (‘green open access’). They are published with a Creative Commons license so that the author(s) retain(s) full copyright to them. If your article is published open access by the publisher and you upload it to your institutional archive, there is no need for making the post-print version accessible.

Should it happen that the publisher threatens you with a lawsuit due to alleged violations of copyright transferred to them, the rights retentions policy guarantees that your institution takes legal responsibility for articles published in its institutional repository. You do not need to inform the publisher about rights retention, all institutions that have such policies have announced them on their websites, which suffices in this case. To date, there have been no cases of publishers suing academic institutions with right retentions policies for violating copyright.

Institutional rights retentions policies are normally limited to journal articles, and do not apply to books. Check what your own institution says about book chapters.

An overview of rights retention policies in Norway can be found on Openscience.no.

If you publish in an open access journal, such as one of the journals published by the Scandinavian University Press, your work will be openly available under a Creative Commons licence. Creative Commons is an organization that has developed licenses enabling the sharing and (re-)use of creative, literary and scientific work. Licences serve as expressions of terms of use on behalf of the copyright holders.

Visit the Creative Commons page to choose the correct or appropriate licence, or read more about the different licences defined by the organization.

Most open access publishers use the CC BY licence, which allows maximum dissemination. Research funders may require that you choose this licence. However, some publishers also allow you to choose a more restrictive licence that prevents for example derivation or commercial use of your work. 

You have discovered that your material has been used in contravention of your copyright, e.g. someone has used your work and has not attributed it to you. In such cases, you should contact the copyright violator and find out if he/she is willing to withdraw the work or change it to comply with the copyright rules. If not, as a last resort, you can file a formal legal complaint in the court system. 

Model letter for contacting a violator of your copyright

[Your name, and contact information (indicate how you are most easily contacted)] Today’s date

[Name and contact information of the copyright infringer or the publisher of the work in which the copyrighted material is misused]

Dear [name]

It has come to my attention that you have used some of my material in contravention of my copyright. The material in question is:

[Give a full citation, a description of the material and where it is published]

[Give a description of why the use is an infringement of your copyright. Example: Under copyright laws, I have the exclusive right to make this image available to the public. Reusing the image online is not allowed, even if you cite my work. These rules are strict when it comes to making works like images, illustrations, etc. electronically available. If you need further details on this matter, do not hesitate to contact me by e-mail, [e-mail address]]

To avoid further action, please take one of the following steps [depending on the material in question, remove text below that is not relevant].

- Remove the material in question from your publication

- Add a proper citation

- Give a proper correction notice in the next issue of the journal

- [If used commercially, or removal of the material is impossible, this could be an option] Pay compensation [to my bank account xxx]

I would greatly appreciate a quick response as to how you will act, and if you have not answered by [set a date you think appropriate], further action will be initiated. Eventually, court action may be a solution. Please also notify me when the steps have been taken.

Yours sincerely,

Does anyone else hold copyright to material you plan to publish in your work? Be especially aware of pictures, illustrations, tables, etc. made by others that you want to publish in your work, since you may have to ask for permission from the copyright owner. This could be from the author, a journal, a publisher or another rights holder that has been assigned the rights. 
 
If the work has fallen into the public domain, the work is free to use, but you still have to acknowledge the creator. Authors are required to follow copyright laws that apply in the country in which the copyright protected material is used. 

Copyright and the right to quote

You may quote from a published, copyright-protected work when this is done in accordance with proper usage and to the extent necessary to achieve the desired purpose (this is regulated by Section 29 of the Norwegian Copyright Act: “the right to quote,” siteringsretten). Using another author's work without giving credit is plagiarism.

Republishing of images, figures and tables is as a rule not covered by the right to quote. If you wish to include images, figures or tables created by someone else in your own work, you will usually have to ask for permission. Research ethics involves respecting copyright and moral right. 

How to obtain permission?

Some publishers or journals have copyright clearing centres or similar arrangements, either of their own or they have enabled you to use the company Copyright Clearance Center. Some electronic journals even offer clearance directly from the article's webpage. Check out the actual work you want to use; if it is posted online, copyright clearing features may be included.

A so-called extended collective licence may also exist for the material you want to use. This means that an organization has cleared the rights for specific copyrighted material. Then you do not have to clear copyright permission. In Norway these rights management organizations manage collective licences: Kopinor, Bono, Fono, Gramo, Norwaco and Tono.

If such a licence does not exist, you should in general clear copyright through one of these rights management organizations. If the author is from outside your country, you should contact the rights management organization(s) there. If such an organization does not exist (or the organization tells you to contact the copyright holder) you must contact the copyright holder directly.

Contact the copyright holder and state what kind of publication you will use the material in, where it will be published, what publisher will publish it, and whether it is for commercial use.

Model letter for requesting permission to use copyrighted material

[Your name, and contact information (indicate how you are most easily contacted)] Today’s date

[Name and contact information of the copyright holder, e.g. a publisher, a journal or the author]

Dear [name]

I am currently writing my PhD dissertation at [your institution] and want to publish [example: an article in journal xxx, both in print and online, or example: an article on this blog xxx, link to webpage]. I am requesting permission to include the following material in this publication:

[Add full citation, to clearly identify what you will be using]

[Briefly describe your work and add something about why you want to use the work, so that the copyright holder understands in which context the material will be used.]

To my knowledge you hold the copyright to [this illustration, figure…]. If you do not hold the right, please inform me of the correct copyright holder and provide me with the necessary contact information.

The permission will only cover non-commercial use of the work as described here, and the work will be properly cited.

To grant me the permission, please fill in the information indicated below, and send me a copy, by post/scanned by e-mail/by fax. Do not hesitate to contact me by e-mail [e-mail address] if you feel additional information is needed.

Your permission will be greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

--------------

Permission to use [citation] is hereby granted:

Date, place and signature:

Full name, title/position/role

Company/affiliation:
 

A work is in the public domain if it is no longer under copyright protection. Furthermore, you can also find Creative Commons-licensed content (images, videos, music, etc.) via the Creative Commons website.

Examples of some other websites where you might find images free to use:

Google Image Search. Use the option for Google Advanced Image Search, and make sure that you choose the appropriate licence, which you will find under the choices for usage rights. It is also good practice to double-check that the image in question really is free to use the way you want.

Flickr. You can search directly for images with different kinds of Creative Commons licences.

Museum or library collections. Many museums and libraries around the world have attached Creative Commons licences to images in their collections. The National Library of Norway has several image collections, which are free to use. A Norwegian example of a library collection is The Picture Collection at the University of Bergen Library, an archive of historic photographs. Another example is the NTNU University Library Special Collection (photos, drawings, maps etc.), which you can find via Gunnerus, or via the search catalogue Oria (choose Advanced Search > Images). Finally, a joint Nordic platform for digital collections and digitized cultural heritages is Alvin.

Some institutions might also have dedicated parts of their collections to the public domain, and equipped them with a Creative Commons Zero licence (CC0). One example of a museum having dedicated some of the images in its collection to the public domain is The Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Creative Commons licences
Norwegian Copyright Act, Åndsverkloven (text in Norwegian).
Search & Write: Intellectual Property Rights
Harvard Law School Library: Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media

CCC Copyright Clearance Center