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Humanities and Social Sciences 
Faculty and Staff Resources

Conflict of Interest and Book Royalties

Conflicts of Interest

The public expects NC State’s faculty to avoid any actual or perceived conflicts of interest. The primary way in which faculty disclose actual or apparent conflicts is through the COI reporting system.

The various conflicts of interest and commitment include, among other things:

  • Consulting work
  • Work that would generate patentable intellectual property (IP) developed in university laboratories
  • Business interests in firms that have links to NC State faculty and their work generated in university facilities

Disclosing Conflicts of Interest

To the extent that any faculty have such conflicts, faculty are required to follow guidance provided in REG 1.25.1 and in the online conflict of interest disclosure form.

COI disclosures

Book Royalties

We get many questions in the COI process on textbook royalties. Many college faculty write books that are used in their classes. Writing textbooks is an important contribution to scholarship and teaching that the college encourages.

However, the assignment of our own textbooks to students may create actual or perceived conflicts of interest to the extent we earn royalty payments on these sales.

The university also notes that faculty possess the best knowledge of the contents of their own books and how to teach from them. And most COI submissions note that our faculty have written books to satisfy a need in the market: better textbooks in that professor’s field of expertise. The university, therefore, encourages departments to develop “management plans” for assigning the texts to our student, and for managing textbook royalty revenue earned from such sales. The university provides little guidance for such plans, and there is no rule that governs how they are handled. However, we consider the management plan for textbooks to include two, easily identified elements:

  • What process was used to adopt the textbook?
  • How are royalties earned from the assignment of this book to your students returned, somehow, to the University for the benefit of students?

This management plan can be described briefly in the COI form. Simply indicate:

  • The process by which the textbook was adopted. Was it selected or vetted by a committee in the department? Or was its use approved by your head?  Either of these processes are acceptable to the College provided that the process is explained.
  • The disposition of your textbook royalties. To avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest, if you assign your own book to students, and if sales of your books generate royalties, you should donate any royalties derived from the sale of your books to your own students to a fund that would benefit students. Such donations would include donations to department funds benefiting students, to scholarship funds, to the Friends of the Library, and the like. A good-faith estimate of the amount of royalties would suffice, keeping in mind that many students may buy used or discounted copies of your books, so, for example, if all your students bought used copies, you may have no royalties to report. You need only indicate what you plan to do with the revenues, and then make good on that promise at the appropriate time.