The workshop is intended to equip the publishers and editors of scholarly journals to understand the issues related to rights and licensing, to review their current policies and practices and to improve them (or define new ones) in line with the international standards and best practices. Although different legal systems around the world use different words and legal provisions for the concept of rights that authors have over the works they have created, there are some basic common understandings related to copyright (or authors’ rights) in scholarly publishing and some international agreements are in place that allow us to have some minimal common ground to apply the same procedures globally. However, the current legislation in this area still lacks full international harmonisation which brings complexity and presents a barrier to the (re)use of copyrighted works. All open access journals and publishers should strive to formulate clear policies that will remove those uncertainties. The use of open licenses and the practice of retaining rights by the original rightsholders will be presented as the means to gain maximum visibility, reusability and impact of published works.

The introductory presentations will provide an overview of basic concepts of copyright or authors’ rights and open licenses in scholarly communication and publishing, as well as describe and explain best practices in defining and displaying copyright and licensing policies.

The practical part of the workshop will focus on templates and examples of:

• Defining copyright and licensing policies
• Displaying copyright and licensing information (in journal websites, instructions to the authors, licences to publish, the journal articles and in the metadata)
• Registering policies in different indexes and databases
• Dealing with third-party copyright.