This document sets out some general guidelines for users of our ACT website when publishing information on the site, or if you find any material on the website which you believe infringes any third party rights or our Terms of Use
The submission of material to ACT will not affect your intellectual property rights and ACT will only make the material available in its original format. We prefer to publish only open content, i.e. materials under open content licenses, but we do allow publishing of documents under non-open licenses in certain circumstances.
For more information about authorship and rights, please consult:
IPR Helpdesk: http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/node/1616
Other useful links:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
UK Intellectual Property Office: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership.htm
Academia.edu FAQs: http://www.academia.edu/copyright/faq
(Note that different countries have different rules regarding ownership and scope of rights)
For more information about open content licensing, you may consult the following links:
Open Content: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_content
Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/choose/
Free Documentation License: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Open data: http://opendatacommons.org/
1. Publishing a full text (pdf, doc or similar)
A. For all documents:
Third party rights: Be sure that you don’t infringe any third parts rights (copyright, privacy, fundamental rights, etc).
Check that the document does not include any third party materials (diagram, images, data) without license or other authorisation from the owner of those materials.
Check that the document doesn’t contain any personally identifying information, such as names, addresses, id numbers, personal email addresses or telephones numbers.
Check that the document does not include other information that may be subject to or may infringe third party rights (confidentiality, reputation, etc.).
Check that the document is appropriate for this site and its purpose and objectives.
If the document does contain any third party content or information, ensure that you have the consent / authorisation of the rights-holder. Please keep a copy of this authorisation on file, in case anyone requests it later.
If you are in any doubt as to whether the content is appropriate for our site please contact us and we will try to help you.
B. If you are the author and rightsholder of the text that was not previously published and there is not any previous agreement about transmissions of copyright:
Licensing: Choose a license:
Select a license for publishing the document on our Portal. The portal uses the Creative Commons license BY-SA 3.0 license, but you may indicate other open content or even closed licenses in the document you are publishing.
If you are using a free content license (Creative Commons, Free Document License, Open Database license, etc.), please indicate “Shareable” in the “license” option of the document upload form.
If you are not using a free content license, please indicate “Not shareable” in the “license” option of the document upload form. Note that you warrant that you can upload the document to the site for publishing and that ACT is authorised by you to disseminate it.
C. If you are the author of the text that has been previously published or you have agreed with a publisher to publish it:
Previous rights.
Check the agreement that you have with your publisher. Publishing agreements often assign ownership of copyright to the publisher or gives her an exclusive license for a certain period.
If the agreement does not mention anything, you are possible not allowed to republish the materials, so please contact the Publisher.
Some publishers allow their PDFs to be used in repositories. See Sherpa Romeo website and Dulcinea website for a list.
If you are in any doubt as to whether you have permission to submit the full text of your material in ACT please contact us and we will try to help you.
D. If you are not the author or rightsholder:
We prefer the author or the rightsholder of any texts, videos or other documents to publish the content on our site. However, this may not always be feasible, and you may be in possession of documents that can be republished – e.g. if they are under open content licenses – that you would like to submit to ACT.
Check the relevant license to the work that you have received. If it is an open content license (Creative Commons or similar), please ensure this is indicated in the document
If the license is not open content, please refer to the rightsholder for permission. Please ensure you have permission to specifically upload and publish the document on ACT. Please indicate what type of permission the rightsholder has given you (free/open license, or closed).
If you cannot find the rightsholder, please contact us and we will try to help you.
E. Submitting an abstract and reference:
If you are not allowed to submit the full text, you may wish to reference a document or other content that is available on the Internet, either freely or with controlled user access (e.g. certain scientific journals or databases).
Please create your own abstract for the work you are referencing.
Failing that, if you want to copy the abstract from the original publisher to ACT, please ensure you may do so legally (authorisation of the author/publisher).
Please link to the webpage where the material is included or embedded (do not deep-link to the actual work) – see guidance on links below.
If you have any doubts, please contact us and we will try to help you.
2. Linking to third party content
While linking in itself does not usually cause any problems, there are some general rules and netiquette to respect:
Check the terms and conditions of the destination website, to see if this is allowed without further consent or authorisation (it generally is).
Check that the materials you are linking to do not evidently breach any third party rights, our Terms, or the law.
If the content is embedded in a web-page with abstract or summary page (like SSRN), please link to the summary page and not link directly to the embedded content (PDF, etc.).
Don’t link to any page that publishes or disseminates spam, illegal code/virus/malware, P2P file-sharing or similar.
If you have any doubts, please contact us (info@act-on-gender.eu) and we will try to help you.
3. Illegal or inappropriate content
ACT respects the rights of others and expects its users to do the same. This includes copyright rights, trademarks, personal rights (privacy, reputation), confidentiality, discrimination and unfair or unequal treatment, confidentiality or any other type of right. It is also our policy not to publish information that is inaccurate or which we consider inappropriate with respect to our purpose and the objectives for ACT website, or otherwise breach our Terms of Use.
As set out in our Terms of Use, we may disable access to or remove contents that breach our Terms, and disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing the third party rights. We will also collaborate with authorities if there initiate any legal proceedings.
We do not a priori supervise, screen or veto any content on the site that we do not personally submit, but we will review the content if any community member sends us a notice. We will respond expeditiously to claims reported to us regarding real or potential infringements of third party rights or of our Terms of Use, committed using the ACT website.
If you believe your or a third party’s rights are infringed on the ACT website, in particular any copyrights in contents, but also confidentiality or privacy rights, for example, or that any content breaches our Terms of Use, please report the alleged infringements to us by contacting us here (or by email to info@act-on-gender.eu), providing the following information:
Your name and identification, with copy of your Identification card/passport.
Your contact details, including address, email address and ideally a phone number.
The material/contents that you allege are infringing our Terms of Use.
Explanation of why you think this content is infringing, with proof or evidence of any infringed rights (such as copyright). In the event of infringing copyright, please identify the original work that has been infringed.
A signed statement that the information you have provided is true and accurate, as far as you are aware, and that the allegations you are making are made in good faith belief upon the basis of the evidence that you have submitted to us.
Upon receipt of sufficient information, we will take whatever action, in our sole discretion, we deem appropriate, including removal of the challenged material from the website and/or disabling the submitter’s user account. If we need any further information, we shall get back in touch with you.