Many traditional academic journal publishers require a transfer copyright agreement to publish articles in their journals. Signing one of these agreements typically means ceding your copyright to the publisher. You may lose the right to post your published article on your website, distribute it to students in your classes, include it in an anthology, or create new works based on it. You can find examples of copyright transfer agreements below.
You can negotiate with publishers to retain some of these rights. One of the easiest and most common ways to do this is through an addendum to your publishing contract. An addendum enables you to retain your rights when publishing.
Visit SPARC's (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) webpage on author rights to learn more.
If you've retained some of your rights as an author, such as the right to deposit your work in an open access repository, contact the Digital Initiatives Librarian to have your work included in Digital USD. Your work will be openly accessible worldwide, discoverable via online search engines, permanently preserved, and tracked by usage such as download counts.