Copyright FAQs

If a chapter or article is covered by the CLA licence and the university has lawful access to a copy of it, the article can be uploaded to Blackboard.

The easiest way to check this is to use the Library Scanning Service. Library staff will check that the requested item is covered by the CLA licence, obtain and scan a copy, add a cover sheet and notify you that the item is available. Note that this service can only be used for reading list materials being uploaded to Blackboard and cannot be used to obtain copies for other purposes.

The CLA licence allows you to reproduce the one chapter or 10% of a book (whichever is greater); 20% or 2 articles from a single journal issues (whichever is greater); or the entirety of a journal special issue. If you need to upload more than this from a book or journal issue, it may be possible to pay for a Second Extract Permission. Contact your subject librarian for details.

It may be possible to upload material not covered by the CLA licence to Blackboard without infringing copyright, using the copyright exception allowing illustration for instruction. However, you must not use more material than is necessary for instruction and the maximum proportion of a work that can be copied in this way is 5%, so you may not be able to rely upon this exception for an entire article or chapter. If you are unsure, check with the Copyright Officer.

If you are including an image (including photographs) in your Blackboard course or in your presentations, you must check if the image is covered by copyright. This is affected by whether the image is copyrightable and if the image is still in copyright.

A 2023 legal judgement made clear that “What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch.” This means that images which have some artistic intent are copyrightable, but images which are solely intended as a photorealistic reproduction of an image (eg photographs of paintings which are out of copyright) are not copyrightable.

If an image is copyrightable, copyright persists until 70 years after the death of the creator, after which time it enters the public domain and can be used by anybody without permission.

You should always give credit to the creator of an image you are using.

There are many libraries of images that are either copyright-free or where the rightsholders have given permission for the images to be reproduced elsewhere. Two such libraries are Pixabay and Unsplash.

Videos you create yourself without using anybody else’s copyrighted materials can be uploaded (or you can create them in Panopto.) Videos from Box of Broadcasts are covered by the university’s ERA licence and can be embedded or linked to from Blackboard.

For other videos, you will either require the permission of the creator, or your use will need to be covered by a copyright exception.

If a video has been uploaded to Youtube, it will usually be possible to link to it or to embed it. However, many videos have been illegally uploaded to Youtube and it is not permitted to embed those in your Blackboard course. To ensure that the video you are using is legitimate, we recommend that you only use videos uploaded by official channels (which can be identified by their verification tick next to the account name). If you wish to embed the video, use the embed code provided.

This will usually be possible by one of two routes. Images or figures taken from works covered by the university’s CLA licence can be reproduced under the terms of the licence. If the diagram is not from a work covered by the CLA licence, you will probably still be able to reproduce it under the copyright exception allowing illustration for instruction.

However, you should always give sufficient acknowledgement when you are using other people’s copyrighted work. This means you should make it clear who created the diagram and where the original can be found.

The short answer is that if you aren’t sure, then it’s probably copyrighted. Any work which meets the requirements for copyright (being an original, creative work of a type covered by copyright) is automatically covered by copyright under UK law and doesn’t have to be registered.

However, you will often find that works include the © symbol, which is an active statement that the work has been copyrighted. On the other side of the equation, some work is deliberately released under open licences, such as Creative Commons licences or Open Government licences, which proactively grant users permission to reproduce their content under certain conditions.

If your work is produced in the ordinary course of your employment (which includes most teaching materials) then copyright will normally be owned by the University, unless there is a contractual agreement otherwise.

You own the copyright in any work created in connection with your research and in any work you produce outside of work. You are free to sell or transfer your copyright to somebody else.

You may choose to add a © symbol to your work along with your name and the year of creation to indicate your copyright. This helps to make people aware the work is copyrighted and discourages infringement.

If you discover somebody has infringed your copyright, inform your publisher (if the work has been published) or the university Copyright Officer (if the work has not been published.) They will be able to advise you on next steps.

Infringing copyright is against the law and is also a breach of the university’s Copyright Policy, which you are obliged to abide by as part of your employment contract.

Being found to have infringed copyright may lead to reputational damage, financial penalties or disciplinary sanctions. Additionally, it may lead to publishers restricting the university’s access to resources and it will almost certainly create extra work for you as you will have to remove and replace infringing content from your teaching materials.

Yes. With books the author usually retains the copyright, but many journals require the author to transfer the copyright in their articles to the journal as a condition of acceptance for publication. However, this does not stop you from depositing a copy of your article in the university’s institutional repository and you are encouraged to do because this is the best way of ensuring that your article is eligible for inclusion in the REF.

The Open Research team in the library can offer advice and support on all stages of the publication process.

Many publishers publish articles under several different licences, which are open to various degrees. The most restrictive licences are for paywalled articles, which are only available to those with access to a subscription.

Other, more open licences are Creative Commons licences. There are six different types of Creative Commons licences (CC BY; CC BY-SA; CC BY-NC; CC BY-ND; CC BY-NC-SA; and CC BY-NC-ND.) All of these licences allow others to republish your article elsewhere but require them to credit you as the author. Some of these licences impose additional conditions, such as preventing them being used for commercial purposes or from creating derivative versions of your article. Creative Commons produce a useful tool for helping you to choose the right licence.

We encourage the use of Creative Commons licences, but publishers often charge to apply such licences. If you are funded by a Research Council or a government body, it may be a condition of your funding that you publish under a Creative Commons licence.

More information about open access licences is available from the Open Research team in the library.

Contact the University Copyright Officer.