Copyright constitutes one of the main intellectual property rights, and its objective is to provide a solution to a series of conflicts of interest that arise between the authors of intellectual creations, publishers and other intermediaries that distribute and the public that consumes them.

The term copyright, so used internationally, comes from Anglo-Saxon law. Today both terms, copyright and author's right, have been converging to become synonymous.

Copyright is divided into two types: moral and patrimonial or exploitation. Moral rights are linked to the author permanently and are irrevocable and imprescriptible.

Moral rights , of a personal nature (art. 14 LPI):

• Decide if the work should be disclosed and in what form.
• Determine whether the disclosure should be made with your name, under a pseudonym or anonymously.
• Demand recognition of the authorship of the work.
• Demand respect for the integrity of the work and prevent any deformation, modification, alteration or attempt against it, which would harm its legitimate interests or belittle its reputation.
• Modify the work, respecting the rights acquired by third parties and the requirements for the protection of goods of cultural interest.
• Withdraw the work from commerce, due to a change in their intellectual or moral convictions, subject to compensation for damages to the owners of the exploitation rights.
• Access the rare or unique copy of the work, when it is in the possession of another, in order to exercise the right of disclosure or any other that corresponds to it.

Property or exploitation rights (art. 17 to 23 LPI):

• Right of reproduction (fixation of the work in a medium that allows its communication and the obtaining of copies of all or parts).
• Right of distribution (making the original or copies of the work available to the public through sale, rental, loan or any other form).
• Right to public communication (every act by which a plurality of people can have access to the work, without prior distribution of copies to each of them).
• Right of transformation (includes its translation, adaptation and any other modification in its form, from which a different work is derived).
• Right of collection (the assignment of exploitation rights over his works will not prevent the author from publishing them in a selected or complete collection).

The owner of the rights of a work is, as a general rule, the person who creates the work, that is, the author. In the LPI (article 5) "the natural person who creates a literary, artistic or scientific work" is considered an author. Although in principle only natural or physical persons can be considered authors, the law foresees certain cases in which legal persons can also benefit from these rights. It is common, however, for copyright transfers to a third party, for example a publisher. In this case, it will be necessary to be what is determined by the contract between employer and author.

Many academic publishers ask authors to cede all these rights to them as part of the submission process. Therefore, it is important for the author to know what he is giving up by publishing his work: if the author unconditionally assigns the copyright of his work to the editor of a journal, he loses the rights listed above ( as exceptions, if by chance, for personal use or for teaching purposes) as they become the property of the publisher. The consequences are multiple, since they considerably affect the publication, distribution and uses of the works.

There are alternative contractual options to exclusive assignment, such as partial assignment (in which some rights are established for the author and others - such as publication or distribution - for the publisher) or no assignment (in this case, the author grants the publisher permission, through a license, to publish the work but retaining the copyrigh ).

Most magazines and publishing houses allow their works to be published in the institutional repository of the university to which the author belongs, unless there is a contract in which this possibility is explicitly excluded. That is why it is important that the author retains control over his work.

Before depositing a work in RODERIC, in cases of assignment of exploitation rights to a publisher, it will be necessary to obtain permission from the publisher so that the author can deposit a copy of his work in the open repository of his institution.

You can consult two databases to find out if the publisher allows the deposit of any version of your work in an open repository. For international magazines, see JISC Open Policy Finder, and for national magazines, see Dulcinea. The vast majority allow authors to deposit some version of their work in an open repository, and others give permission upon request.

If you want to deposit your work in RODERIC and you still have doubts about copyright, you can contact the people responsible for managing the repository, the Library's Research Support Service or consult the following guide.

All material deposited in RODERIC is subject to copyright, as indicated in the repository license. When an author deposits his work in RODERIC, he confirms that he owns the copyright or that he has been authorized by the copyright holder to deposit it in the repository. By licensing RODERIC you are simply authorizing the repository to non-exclusively disseminate, store and preserve the deposited digital object.

The documents stored in RODERIC are distributed to the international community of users free of charge and under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. If the author wishes to distribute them under another type of license, he must notify the repository managers.

A license is the authorization or permission granted by the author to use his work in an agreed way having marked limits and rights regarding its use. A license can restrict the territory of application, its duration or any other clause that the author of a work decides to include.

In recent years, licenses have appeared that expand, and do not restrict, uses. Among them, the most well-known are the Creative Commons licenses , which originated in the United States in 2002, and which have soon been extended and adapted to the national legislation of more than 50 countries around the world (in Spain, since 2004) . Creative Commons licenses allow the distribution, exhibition, performance and transmission of a work to anyone under certain conditions. For this reason, the Creative Commons logo is CC, "some rights reserved", as opposed to the "all rights reserved" of traditional copyright .

We can find four combined conditions to choose from

These rights can be offered under the conditions of "attribution", "non-commercial", "share alike" and "no derivative work", and according to the possible combinations of these conditions 6 different types of licenses can be given. The fact that a work is distributed under a Creative Commons license does not mean that it is exempt from copyright protection .

The principles of Zwolle were declared in 2002 to claim a balance of rights between publishers, authors, academic institutions and knowledge funding agencies.

It is necessary to remember that the terms of a contract must be acceptable to both signatory parties, and for this reason, the author must try to modify the contractual terms if they are not fair by including an addendum (proposals of SPARC and JISC/SURF Copyright Toolbox.

Therefore, there are options for the full and exclusive assignment of the exploitation rights of a work. The following are alternatives to consider when posting:

• Publication in open access journals (a comprehensive list can be found in DOAJ )
• Publication in journals that allow deposit in open repositories
• Publication in journals that do not require exclusive assignment
• Amendment of the contract with the publisher
• Use of an alternative license (eg Creative Commons)

The main national norm is the Consolidated Text of the Intellectual Property Law, approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996 of April 12 , which has been subject to some subsequent modifications, the last one approved by the Law 21/2014, of November 4 .

Also of consideration are the Community Directives on the subject, especially Directive 2001/29/EC on copyright and related rights in the information society.

Important international rules are: the Bern Convention, signed in 1886 and revised on several occasions, and the WIPO Treaty of December 20, 1996 .

Taking into account the attribution of rights that the LPI makes in favor of the author, as well as RODERIC's document deposit policy, the legitimation for the defense of the authorship of the work and for the exercise of the corresponding legal actions against whoever had plagiarized correspond to the author.

Exclusive assignees have standing, regardless of the author, to pursue violations of the powers that have been assigned to them. The non-exclusive assignees are entitled to defend the powers granted. But, in any case, this legitimization does not achieve the defense of moral rights, which always correspond to the author.

Plagiarism can be defined as the act of usurping the authorship of a work or part of it or the name of an artist in a performance or performance.

Plagiarism has two aspects: the usurpation of intellectual personality (moral right) and the defrauding of the exploitation rights of the work, in addition to deceiving the public.

If the author appreciates the existence of plagiarism, he must go to the request for the protection of his copyright, in accordance with the provisions of articles 138 to 143 of the LPI:

The holder of the rights recognized in this Law, without prejudice to other actions that correspond to him, may urge the cessation of the illegal activity of the offender and demand compensation for the material and moral damages caused, in the terms provided for in articles 139 and 140…

Likewise, he may request in advance the adoption of the precautionary measures of urgent protection regulated in article 141". (art. 138 LPI).

There is also the possibility of taking the corresponding criminal actions, as provided for in Section I, Chapter XI of Title II of the Penal Code, which regulates crimes related to intellectual property.

1. He will be punished with a prison sentence of six months to two years and a fine of 12 to 24 months who, for profit and to the detriment of a third party, reproduces, plagiarizes, distributes or publicly communicates, in whole or in part, a literary, artistic or scientific work, or its transformation, interpretation or artistic execution fixed in any type of support or communicated through any medium, without the authorization of the holders of the corresponding intellectual property rights or their assignees. (art. 270 Civil Code )