The first overall strategy for creating impact that we'll talk about is when you share knowledge and spread information about your research results to the public domain. This is the most common way of creating impact in research and the typical ways this happens are:

Scientific publications (articles, books, reports, conferences, etc.)
Contributions in education (educational materials, text books, etc.)
Popular science publications (non-academic publications, mainstream media, podcasts, social media, etc.)

In all of these scenarios, there are specific IP related questions that you need to be aware of and handle well to be able to create impact and continue to perform your research like you want. This is what we will look at now.

1. Scientific publications

Publication in scientific journals, books, reports, participation in conferences, and other forms of scientific publishing is the lifeblood of academic research, so making sure that you have control over how you can publish your results is vital for your research career.

There are a few main IP related topics to keep a special eye on related to scientific publishing:

Potential restrictions or requirements on publishing from collaboration partners or funding sources
Who should be included in the publication process and the final publications
Confidentiality issues
How to handle the research data
Ownership to the copyright to the final publication

Let's take a closer look at each one of them.

1.1 Potential restrictions or requirements on publishing

Lets start with the most important question - how to handle potential requirements or restrictions on publishing your results. This question comes up in pretty much every funding agreement and collaboration agreement, and if the requirements or restrictions are very strict it will affect your freedom to publish significantly.

Here is Malin Koch from the Civil Law and Contracts unit to talk about KTH's point of view on this issue.

1.2 Who should be included in the publication

As we have mentioned earlier, a fundamental principle is that it is always important from an IP management perspective to keep track of who is contributing to the creation of the IP. When we talk about scientific publications the main rule according to the KTH IP Guidelines (In English here, in Swedish here) is this:

"Authors of a publication comprise all, and only those individuals, who have made a significant intellectual or scholarly contribution to the work reported. All contributors that have made a significant contribution to a publication shall be named as authors.

PhD students are the primary authors to their dissertations and in principle also the main authors to publications based on their dissertations.

Students are the primary authors to their theses.

Sponsoring of research, other non-intellectual contribution or a specific academic position does not in itself constitute a right to be named as author to a publication."

In collaborations, it’s a good idea to agree with collaboration partners on things like who can/shall publish what and when, how to handle shared publications, etc. This way you can avoid that other groups (that you may collaborate with) publish something that you had planned to publish.

Another key consideration is whom you share your data and results with before they are published. Some research fields are highly competitive so you may not want certain other research groups to know exactly what you are about to publish.

1.2.1 From theory to practice - Examples of IP management in practice at KTH - Keeping track of who's done what in a research project

Since the question of whom to include in a publication boils down to who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the work that is being published, we can revisit the interview with professor Amelie Eriksson Karlström from the previous module where she talks about her experience of documenting and keeping track of individual contributions in the research.

1.3 Confidentiality issues

Publishing your research results and methods is, as we have said many times, a natural part of your research work. There is, however, certain information that you have to keep confidential for one reason or another, both your own information and information that you get from collaboration partners. This means that you will at some stage encounter the question of how to deal with confidential information

To give you some guidance on this, here are our legal counsels, Therese and Malin, to talk you through some of the main points to keep in mind relating to confidentiality in your research.

1.4 How to handle the research data

The data you produce in your research work that is the basis for your results is increasingly valuable.

According to the KTH IP Guidelines, the basic rule at KTH is that research data shall be openly and freely accessible for use in academic work, but other rules can apply in certain projects if agreed upon between the project parties.

What’s important is to clarify the situation from the beginning and to set up solutions to handle the research data – guidelines, processes, technical solutions, etc. – that are in line with the agreed upon rules and OK for all parties.

The management of research data is a hot topic and it can be a big issue in many research fields, so for that reason KTH has developed a separate Canvas course called Open Science and Research Data Management where you can dive deeper into these questions (when you are finished with this course)

1.5 Ownership to the copyright to the final publication

When you submit your manuscript to an academic journal you typically sign some sort of copyright assignment or licensing agreement with the journal. This often means that you are restricted in how you can use and re-publish the content in your article, including graphs, visualisations, etc. without asking the publisher for permission.

Different journals have different agreements, though, so you have to check the ones in which you publish. One source for this is Sherpa Romeo.

For questions around publishing you should contact the KTH Library. There you can also learn more about the economic support for publishing fees in open access journals that is available from KTH.

2. Contributions in education

Including research results and knowledge from the research work in educational material, textbooks, etc. is a core task at a university.

When it comes to IP management related to contributions in educational material there are two main things to keep in mind:

Ownership and right to use the educational material that you produce
Keep track of the copyright in the material

In this video we dive deeper into this and give you some simple guidelines to keep in mind when you create educational material.

3. Popular science publications

Disseminating research results and knowledge through other channels than the traditional academic publications, like popular science publications, mainstream media, podcasts, social media, etc., is increasingly important and encouraged.

In the discussion below with the legal counsels Malin and Therese we discuss a few IP related topics to keep a special eye on related to popular science publication.

Module 4 - Key take-aways

Knowledge and information dissemination is really at the core of your work as a researcher so this is an area that touches everyone involved in research at KTH.

We bring up a number of IP management related issues here, but our hope is that your reaction to most of them is a nod in confirmation - "yep, that's how we do things and this makes sense" - and not a gasp of surprise - "oh, I had no idea, this is really not how we use to do things"...

Don't hesitate to reach out to us at KTH Innovation or Research Support Office if you have any questions related to this. We can guide you in all matters of IP management, RSO with a primary focus on research collaborations and KTH Innovation with a primary focus on impact, commercialization, and agreements around your IP.

As always, the KTH IP Guidelines (In English here , in Swedish here ) are a very good point of reference for all questions in this areas as well!

Before we move to the next module, let's spend a few minutes reflecting on your work with spreading your research and research results to the public public domain.