Reusing your own material

There may be times that you wish to make new use of material from your previous research. It is important to note that while you may have created the material involved, you may no longer hold the copyright (see Publishing and copyright above). This means that you may not be able to reuse your material in the way you need to, unless you have been granted the right to do so under your publishing agreement.

As an example, Sage's Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines allow for authors to make use of their final contribution "in a book authored or edited by [them], at any time after the contribution’s publication in the journal", as long as appropriate credit is provided to the original article. Other publishers may make similar allowances for this complete reuse of a work after seeking permission, e.g., via completion of an online form.

Depending on your publishing agreement, where you have transferred copyright you may need to seek permission from the publisher for reuse of even a small part of a work  (e.g., a figure or a table).  Many journals/publishers make this permissions process easy for authors through the use of online forms for copyright clearance agencies such as the Copyright Clearance Center (aka CCC) or PSClear. To use these services you will need to create an account, which can be used to manage and access your clearances. Many publishers allow authors reuse of small amounts of material at no cost, either via their internal policies or through being a signatory to the STM Permissions Guidelines.

Where you have retained copyright or have published under a Creative Commons licence, you will usually have more reuse options. To learn more about publishing and reuse under Creative Commons, see our page on Open licensing.

If you have created figures, etc., that you are considering using in your research publication, but don't want to assign the copyright to a publisher, self-publishing this material first under an open licence may provide an avenue to help retain your copyright. You can then reproduce/cite this material with the licensing information (the latter is important to highlight ownership of the material).

Note that reuse of material in (or from) a thesis or dissertation may be treated differently to other research - see Theses and dissertations below for more information.

Have a questions about the above? The Copyright Advisor can help.