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Many authors have strict regulations in their contract of employment regarding their works. A transfer of copyright to the institution or company, as well as the reservation of specific usage rights, is typical. Please note that in the case of open-access publications in combination with a Creative Commons License, a transfer of the copyright to the institution is possible, as it belongs to the author anyway and is not subject to the publisher.

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All articles published by Copernicus Publications are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (see details above) together with an author copyright. Therefore, there is no need from the publisher's side to allow/confirm a reproduction. We would suggest contacting the author to inform him/her about the further usage of the material. But as the author decided to publish the scientific results under the "CC-BY" license, he/she decided to share the work under the condition that the original authors must be given credit.