The great value of the Internet is that having a journal publish your work is no longer the end of the story. You have the power and tools to help distribute your own work so that it can resonate in ways never before imagined. First, you have to be sure to retain at least some of your copyright during the publishing process. Here's how:
Establish a Creative Commons License . Creative commons is a nonprofit organization that helps "authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry." It allows you to copyright your work while enabling people to more readily copy and distribute your work--provided they give you credit--in the ways you want them to.
Publish in journals that allow you to retain your rights. This will make it possible for you to share your work in the digital environment. The RoMEO database is a growing list of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. It is searchable by publisher and enables you to add publishers to the list. Self-archiving (posting on a personal/ departmental website or in a digital collection supported by the University) is a key right to retain so that you can create a digital copy of your own body of work.
Download the SPARC Author Addendum . When added to traditional publication agreements, the addendum will help you to retain more of your own rights to your journal publications and make it possible for you to more easily control your work in the digital environment (including protecting your right for online posting or using portions of your articles in future work.)