Many commercial publishers have their authors give them exclusive exploitation rights for the works (essays, monographs, contributions to anthologies). This means that even you, as the author of the work, are required to get the publisher’s permission beforehand or must have legal grounds for copying your work and sharing physical or digital copies with your students.
This is not the case, however, if you only transferred usage rights to the publisher, as is broadly the case with open access publications. In this situation, you may decide for yourself how the work may be used.
Am I permitted to share my publications with students via ILIAS? Can graphics or other images taken from my publications be used in course slides?
Check your contract! If it states that you give the publisher exclusive exploitation rights, then you may only use your work as permitted by law for teaching purposes (§ 60a UrhG) and in line with the right to citation (§ 51 UrhG) (see previous FAQ sections). In the first year after the work was first published, you may share at least the digital manuscript version of essays in journals with your students (§ 38 para. 1 UrhG – detailed information is available in the copyright guide (in German) from the Communication, Information, Media Centre (KIM)). For more extensive use, you will need to get your publisher’s consent.