On behalf of all Dutch universities, UNL commissioned a working group to harmonise the way Dutch universities apply employer copyright in their institutions. The issue at hand was: Who is the copyright owner of works produced by university employees and others affiliated with the university? Some universities take the view that copyright belongs to the university as the employer, while others assign the copyright to the individual employee – at least for certain types of copyrighted works.

The working group delivered its report (in Dutch only) in November 2023. The report showed that while it is not currently possible to fully harmonise employer copyright for all types of works, the aim is to harmonise where possible for works where there is little or no disagreement, such as for open educational resources. The working group strongly recommended that each university will draw up a clear policy on employer copyright for all types of academic works and will communicate the policy to its academics in a manner that is clear and transparent. All universities, including Leiden University, adopted that advice. For Leiden University this resulted in the aforementioned Regulations. These Regulations were drafted by Erna Sattler, Copyright Expert (CDS/UBL, also a member of the UNL working group), Karlijn Hermans, Coordinator Open Science (SAZ/BB) and Anneke Hendriks, Board Secretary/Policy Adviser (SAZ/BB).

Before it was delivered to the Executive Board for approval, the draft Regulation was presented to the faculties and others for input. All this input has been incorporated and resulted in the present document.

What is the Leiden University policy on copyrighted works produced by its research community (and other Leiden employees)? Copyright on publications belongs to employees and copyright on all other works belongs to the University as employer. Publications are defined as anything published with a publisher, such as books, book chapters, journal articles, conference proceedings and the like.

So, what about other academic output, such as teaching material, (research) software and data(sets)? Copyright and possible other rights belong to the employer, Leiden University. This does not mean that you as a researcher cannot do anything with this research output. Leiden University encourages and allows its researchers to share their output in open access, as part of the University’s Open Science ambition. Some academic output can be shared with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. The preferred licenses are CC BY (credit must be given to the author) and CC BY-SA (credit must be given to the author and adaptations must be shared under the same terms). The Regulations have an appendix where these and other CC licenses are explained, so academics can make an informed decision on how to share their output.

And what if you are not an employee, but do have an affiliation with Leiden University, such as students, external & scholarship PhDs, professors by special appointment (bijzonder hoogleraren) or guests (gastmedewerkers)? In short, the University does not claim their copyright, but does expect these affiliates to comply with any University regulations applicable to them.

For quite some time, it was unclear who owned which rights to which works. We are happy to have this question answered in clear and transparent regulations. We consider it to be a ‘living document’ and welcome your feedback. For questions, please contact any of the drafters of the Regulations.

The Leiden University Employer Copyright Regulations can be found here in Dutch and English.

The blog has been reviewed by Karlijn Hermans and Pascal Flohr. Banner image by Pexels from Pixabay.