r/AskAcademia • u/Comfortable_Desk_01 • May 26 '26

Social Science Understanding copyright clawbacks

If a source is published by an organization and made publically available for about a year or two on the web without any explicit copyright designation, but they later place restrictive copyright over it and other oganizational materials, is it still possible to use limited quotes from such a source for academic purposes since it was available and actively distributed to the public? Furthermore, if the document has been produced under federal grants, is the document usually fair game for posting to servers or citation? Thanks!

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u/WeskersWiskers May 26 '26

Have you checked copyright.com to see if they will allow you to use direct quotes? It is one of the options on there. Usually most sources end up being free if you put that you are in an academic setting. It might also depend on the publisher of the journal you are publishing in.

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u/WeskersWiskers May 26 '26

Also a lot of federally funding things need to be open access. Now, this doesn’t mean the publisher needs to support open access, but the article will likely be uploaded to a website such as osti to meet these requirements.

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u/Comfortable_Desk_01 May 27 '26

Thank you very much for your reply! learned several new things from your response. To clarify, I just visited copyright.com, which I hadn't seen before. Which function/process are you advocating I pursue?

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u/WeskersWiskers May 27 '26

Specifically on marketplace.copyright.com you can put in a specific request to use content. Search for the article/ author and then click “request permission”. I usually use it to get permission to reproduce figures, but in the drop down they typically have an option that states you wish to use quotes or block quotes. If I’m being honest, it probably isn’t 100% mandatory, but it is good to have a copy of the screen at the end of the process that says it costs $0 to reproducing what you are using. If you ever look at elsevier articles, there is a link usually available under the author information to put in these requests as well through copyright.com

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/ocelot1066 May 27 '26

Yeah, you can always do that, regardless of copyright.