Coypright Law and Contracts
When publishing in the Research Information System (=FIS) of the University of Bamberg, you must observe copyright law. As soon as you not only want to enter bibliographic data in the FIS, but also publish full texts, you will therefore be asked to select a licence and a contract.
For a second publication (e.g. if you have already published with a publisher and would now like to additionally publish your publication in the Research Information System), please note your publishing contract: you can only issue a licence that is compatible with this contract. If possible, take this into account when deciding where you would like to publish! Common regulations of publishers for secondary publications can be found in the SHERPA/RoMEO list.
Granting of rights of use / Publication Contract
The grantings of rights of use / The publication contract regulate the legal relationship between you as the author and the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg, acting on its behalf the University Library Bamberg as the publisher. Your document may only be published (i.e. activated in the FIS) after the signed form has been received by the University Library. If you only want to enter a title for the university bibliography (without full text), no form is necessary.
The following grantings of rights to use eg. the publication contract of UBP can be offered for the document types book (monograph), dissertation, habilitation, bachelor's thesis / master's thesis / thesis:
- Publication (except theses)(177.6 KB): Please select this form for publications in the FIS that are neither published by the University of Bamberg Press nor are theses.
- Theses (dissertation, habilitation, Bachelor's thesis / Master's thesis / thesis)(223.5 KB): Please select this form if you would like to publish a thesis in the FIS. In addition to you, your supervisor must sign the form stating that he or she agrees to the publication.
- Publications in the publishing house UBP(518.2 KB): Please choose this contract if you would like to publish in the university publishing house University of Bamberg Press.
- Pre-confirmation according to §16 (3) PromO GuK and HuWi(255.0 KB): In the faculties GuK and HuWi the doctoral certificate can be handed out early under certain conditions. Please choose this form if you have completed your doctorate at one of the two faculties, would like to publish your dissertation elsewhere and need an early confirmation.
Please print out the forms and hand it in at any branch library for the attention of the Research and Publication Services team or send it by post to the following address:
Universitätsbibliothek Bamberg
- Forschungs- und Publikationsservices -
Postfach 2705
96018 Bamberg.
Licences
Licences regulate the rights of use for your publication. With this, you determine who may redistribute, modify or otherwise make use of your publication and under which conditions. For first publications according to Open Access principles, we recommend the Creative Commons CC BY licence.
Regardless of which licence you choose, the copyright of your publication remains with you. It is inalienable and can only be transferred to third parties through inheritance (paragraph 29 UrhG). As the author, you can decide whether your work should be published at all and who may use it and under what conditions.
Copyright is also the basis for the remuneration paid by VG Wort. You can find more information about this here (in German).
Creative Commons Licences
A CC licence (Creative Commons Licence) for a publication allows you to specify how your publication may be distributed and used. You can grant the users of your publication far more differentiated rights than the copyright law provides. The limitations of copyright law, e.g. the right to quote, continue to apply regardless of the licence under which the work is placed.
CC licences are used internationally and in a standardised way to break down barriers to the distribution of knowledge in the research and cultural sector. The granting of a CC licence enables legal certainty - for both publishers and users. Especially for Open Access Publications, this ensures optimal accessibility and distribution. However, only the CC BY and CC BY-SA licences are considered open-access-compatible CC licences. The other CC licences restrict the Open Access principles.
If you want to issue a CC licence for your publication, you should consider what is most important to you, e.g. the widest possible distribution, intensive subsequent use or protection against commercial use. However, with regard to non-commercial use, please note that this choice may limit the visibility of your document. This rule also applies to providers of search engines and resource discovery systems. In addition, your work cannot be included in non-commercial offerings if they use a more permissive licence application (e.g. in Wikipedia with the CC BY-SA licence as standard). Similarly, it cannot be used in academic blogs if they contain advertising.
German Copyright Law
German copyright law is considered the "strictest licence". The legally permitted uses are set out in sections 44a-63a UrhG. These include:
- Use for the purpose of quotation (§51 UrhG),
- Use for private and other personal use (§53 UrhG), including reproduction (e.g. copying and printing), if it concerns small parts of a published work or individual articles published in newspapers or magazines,
- use for teaching, science and institutions under certain conditions (§§60a-h UrhG).
All other types of use, e.g. adaptations, commercial use, public reproduction, duplication and distribution, are only permitted with the express permission of the author.