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F&M College Library

College Scholarship

Digital Collections of Scholarly Work by F&M faculty, students, and professional staff

Authors' Rights and Copyright

Unless otherwise stated, authors retain the copyright for all content posted to Scholars Square. All materials in Scholars Square are subject to Title 17 of the U.S. Code

For a list of publishers' policies regarding authors' rights to publish pre-prints and post-prints in a repository such as Scholars Square, search the Sherpa Romeo Database. If you do not already have permission to deposit your work in a digital repository, you may need to write directly to the publisher to request this permission. To make this process easier, Scholars Square has provided a template (RTF) to use when contacting publishers. You can modify the template as needed, or just fill in the blanks with the appropriate information. Some publishers can also be contacted about permissions via an online web form on their site. 

Contributors are strongly encouraged to assign Creative Commons licenses to submissions in order to increase access while retaining certain rights. Descriptions of licenses, as well as instructions on attaching these to files, can be accessed at Creative Commons

For still more information on digital preservation, public domain, and copyright, please visit the Digital Preservation site at the Library of Congress, Peter Hirtle's Copyright Term and the Public Domain, and the U.S. Copyright Office