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I'm not a lawyer, but if you're actually credited on the document in question as (co-)author, I'm not sure how you can be prevented from claiming authorship, as long as you also note that the work was done while working for whoever your employee was at the time. When I worked for a company that prepared reports for an outside entity that had funded the work, those who authored the report would subsequently list in their CVs as:

Author1, Author2, ... AuthorN. "Title of Report" Report prepared by MyCompany for OutsideFundingEntity. Year.

If individuals weren't noted on the report's title page, people didn't list in their CVs.

My understanding was/is that this is standard practice.

However, I should note that in my case at least, the OutsideFundingEntity was always part of the US government. It might be that the practice is different if the outside funders are a company, and some sort of NDA or other confidentiality agreement is involved.

Who "owns" a document is a different question than who holds the copyright, let alone who can claim authorship. If I own a letter from a living celebrity, I can sell it if I want, but I can't publish it without writer's permission.

>>Kathy

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Katherine Godfrey
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I'm not a lawyer, but if you're actually credited on the document in question as (co-)author, I'm not sure how you can be prevented from claiming authorship, as long as you also note that the work was done while working for whoever your employee was at the time. When I worked for a company that prepared reports for an outside entity that had funded the work, those who authored the report would subsequently list in their CVs as:

Author1, Author2, ... AuthorN. "Title of Report" Report prepared by MyCompany for OutsideFundingEntity. Year.

If individuals weren't noted on the report's title page, people didn't list in their CVs.

My understanding was/is that this is standard practice.

However, I should note that in my case at least, the OutsideFundingEntity was always part of the US government. It might be that the practice is different if the outside funders are a company, and some sort of NDA or other confidentiality agreement is involved.

Who "owns" a document is a different question than who holds the copyright, let alone who can claim authorship. If I own a letter from a living celebrity, I can sell it if I want, but I can't publish it without writer's permission.

>>Kathy

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Katherine Godfrey
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I spent nearly twenty years with a major computer company and published a number of papers in IEEE, RAMS and Industrial Marketing Journal.  Generally, you of course need approval but my company was always eager to get their name out there and it is also a way of attracting good future employees.  However, any thing on the cutting edge that was patentable then you were to take that route with their lawyers paying all the costs and the company owns the patent.

I spent nearly 10 years under contracts from a certain government agency. Extremely interesting work and experience. However, there were lots of procedures for getting the government agency approval and the waiting time would probably make people with astonishing results famous in late retirement or posthumously.  Once a person just published a paper. It caused a lot of commotion that probably cauused lots of procedures for a "reportable event" and will probably make the person feel bad in late retirement or posthumously.

My two cents.

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J. Dobbins
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The client owns the report, not the organization that prepared the report. The performing organization may have a copyright on the report, either by application to the US Copyright Office or by simply asserting the copyright (by putting such a statement naming the owner and the year on the title page or someplace else in the front matter.) You can certainly include the report in your CV,, but you shouldn't distribute the report or make it available by a downloads without the permission of the client. You can't change your address in the report, however, if you get the client's permission to distribute the report you could put your own cover or distribution message before the cover or title page where you could put your current association and contact information.

This opinion is based on my 31 year career with an economic consulting firm

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Stephen A. Schneider, Ph.D.
Principal Consultant - Economics & Statistics)

(formerly Senior Vice President, now semi-retired)

Nathan Associates - Economic Consultants
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The client owns the report, not the organization that prepared the report. The performing organization may have a copyright on the report, either by application to the US Copyright Office or by simply asserting the copyright (by putting such a statement naming the owner and the year on the title page or someplace else in the front matter.) You can certainly include the report in your CV,, but you shouldn't distribute the report or make it available by a downloads without the permission of the client. You can't change your address in the report, however, if you get the client's permission to distribute the report you could put your own cover or distribution message before the cover or title page where you could put your current association and contact information.

This opinion is based on my 31 year career with an economic consulting firm

------------------------------
Stephen A. Schneider, Ph.D.
Principal Consultant - Economics & Statistics)

(formerly Senior Vice President, now semi-retired)

Nathan Associates - Economic Consultants
------------------------------

If someone hired you to write a report for them, then I would think they own the copyright, but there should have been an explicit agreement made WRT your rights. When I worked for an environmental agency in the state government of NC, I wrote what we characterized as data summary reports based on public, nonconfidential data. Some show my name as the author, and some are represented to be anonymous (but may have a note identifying me as the chief editor). They were all really public domain, and at some point I began intentionally showing "not copyrighted" on a copyright page behind the title page.

As for updating your contact information in this way, whether you have a "right" to do it is problematic, but my preference is to show your affiliation as it was when the report was originally issued. I guess you could simply add a footnote indicating something to the effect of "new address as of [date]: ...". However, if you remove the original contact information,  then IMO you have actually created a revision of the original report. At least it is a new edition or new version, and I would want it to acknowledge that it is a new version and explain what exactly got changed, vs. what stayed the same. You might as well incorporate other revisions while you're at it, such as "corrigenda".

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Wayne Cornelius
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If someone hired you to write a report for them, then I would think they own the copyright, but there should have been an explicit agreement made WRT your rights. When I worked for an environmental agency in the state government of NC, I wrote what we characterized as data summary reports based on public, nonconfidential data. Some show my name as the author, and some are represented to be anonymous (but may have a note identifying me as the chief editor). They were all really public domain, and at some point I began intentionally showing "not copyrighted" on a copyright page behind the title page.

As for updating your contact information in this way, whether you have a "right" to do it is problematic, but my preference is to show your affiliation as it was when the report was originally issued. I guess you could simply add a footnote indicating something to the effect of "new address as of [date]: ...". However, if you remove the original contact information,  then IMO you have actually created a revision of the original report. At least it is a new edition or new version, and I would want it to acknowledge that it is a new version and explain what exactly got changed, vs. what stayed the same. You might as well incorporate other revisions while you're at it, such as "corrigenda".

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Wayne Cornelius
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