Yes. The Copyright Act provides that copyright in a work may be owned jointly if two or more authors have made indistinguishable contributions to the creation of a work. Joint ownership of copyright can also be provided for in an agreement between the authors or contributors.
Written works are protected automatically as soon as they are “fixed”; for example, written on paper or saved to computer disk. It is not necessary that your name appear on a work for it to be protected. Thus, your use of a pen name or pseudonym will not generally affect the copyright protection for your work. A work first published under a pseudonym may only be protected for 70 years from the year of publication, rather than 70 years from the year of the author’s death, if the author’s identity cannot be ascertained.
Generally, you may use a pen name, pseudonym, company name or business name in a copyright notice. In Australia, and nearly all other countries, the copyright notice is not a requirement for protection, it just notifies people that the work is protected.
You may, however, want to include your contact details near the notice, so that a person who wants to reproduce your work can easily contact you.
Generally, copyright does not protect a name, whether it is the real name of an author, a pen name, a book title or a magazine article title. If the writer has established a reputation in a pen name, he or she may be able to prevent others from using the name in a way that causes confusion (for example, by relying on the law of passing off, fair trading laws or consumer protection laws). A distinctive name may also be registrable as a trademark.
The internationally recognised copyright notice is the copyright symbol ©, followed by the name of the copyright owner and the year of first publication. In many publications, other words are added to this notice. For example: “© Kieran Sting 1992. Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher”.
There is, however, no “standard” or prescribed wording for such a notice. It is generally up to the publisher to determine the form of words used.
Generally, you do not avoid infringement by making changes. If the altered version includes an important part of the work, then you should get permission.