ACM Copyright Licenses: Which should you choose, and how do you handle third-party material? | Casey Fiesler

"A few years ago, ACM [Association For Computing Machinery] changed its copyright model to offer three different options for authors publishing ACM papers: (1) a non-exclusive license to ACM that requires an “open access” fee; (2) a license granting ACM exclusive publishing rights; and (3) a copyright transfer to ACM. Previously, the third option was the only one available to authors, and this move was generally seen as a response by ACM to criticism over their lack of open access. Since this change, when there is a new camera-ready manuscript deadline for a big conference, multiple people always ask my advice on handling their copyright. My typical tweet-sized response is: “License. No reason to transfer your copyright.” So I thought I would explain this in more detail, along with some related issues of what you’re allowed to do after you grant this license, and finally some detailed notes about something else I get a lot of questions about — use of third-party material. This is based on some research and my reading of the copyright licenses, not from speaking with anyone at ACM — and of course, my opinion and IANYL. Most of the content in this piece comes from two blog posts I wrote a few years ago, one about licenses and one about fair use, though I’ve updated to reflect some changes in workflow that appear to be fairly recent...."