IP & Publication Policy

• Fellows own what they create. The programme takes a licence, not the copyright.
• Nobody buys editorial control. Funding does not determine findings.
• Authorship follows contribution, and Fellows are named where they authored.
• Everything published carries a funding disclosure.

Copyright in deliverables, portfolio pieces, code, datasets, policy drafts and written submissions created by a Fellow during the programme remains with that Fellow, or with their employer where their employment contract says so. Fellows are responsible for checking their own employment position before submitting work derived from their day job.

By enrolling, each Fellow grants Legum a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, reproduce, adapt and display their programme work for teaching, assessment, quality assurance, accreditation evidence, non-commercial promotion of the Fellowship, and publication under this policy, with attribution.

Curriculum, module materials, assessment instruments, rubrics, templates and platform content remain the property of Legum or of the faculty member who created them, as agreed in the faculty agreement. Fellows may use these materials for their own professional practice and may not resell, republish or deliver them as training without written permission.

Where a deliverable is produced for a live counterparty, such as a regulator, partner or the African Stablecoin Compliance & Policy Lab, the terms of engagement are agreed in writing before work starts and shared with the Fellows involved. Jointly created work is owned jointly, and no contributor may publish it unilaterally.

• All research published under the Legum imprint is approved by the Research Council, which is independent of programme management and of funders.
• Every brief goes through internal review, at least one external reviewer where the subject is contested, and a factual accuracy check with any institution named.
• The Research Council may require revision. It may not require a conclusion.
• A funder, partner or sponsor may comment on a draft. Comments are advisory, logged, and never a condition of publication.

Authorship is granted for substantive contribution to conception, research, analysis or drafting. Fellows who meet that threshold are named authors, not acknowledged assistants. Order of authorship is agreed in writing before submission. Supervision alone does not earn authorship. Disputes are decided by the Academic Director, with appeal to the Research Council.

Every publication states who funded the work, and whether any funder had access to a draft. Where an output touches on a funder's commercial interest, the disclosure says so explicitly and the Research Council records the fact in its minutes.

Unless a commissioning agreement says otherwise, public research briefs and the regulatory tracker are published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: reuse freely, credit the authors and Legum, and do not misrepresent the findings. Underlying datasets are published where confidentiality and source agreements allow.

Work that draws on confidential supervisory, client or employer information must be anonymised or cleared in writing before submission, and never published without that clearance. Chatham House Rule material may inform analysis but may not be quoted or attributed.

AI assistance is permitted for drafting, research and code where the module brief allows it, and must be disclosed in the submission. Generated text presented as original analysis without disclosure is treated as an academic integrity breach under the Code of Conduct. Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy.

Fellows and alumni may state accurately that they completed the Fellowship and may reference their published work. Use of the Legum name or marks in company marketing, fundraising or product claims requires written permission. Legum may name a Fellow as an author or, with consent, feature their work; we do not use participant images or quotes in promotion without consent.

Errors are corrected openly, with a dated correction note on the published version. Where a finding cannot stand, the output is withdrawn with a public statement of why. We would rather publish a correction than defend a mistake.