With the new academic year upon us, what better time to post a refresher on copyright practices?

Whether you are preparing your lectures, carrying on with your research projects, attending new modules or writing your dissertation, here is a reminder of what you can do when using resources in your teaching, learning and research…while staying within copyright law.

1. You can rely on licences and services the University subscribes to. The CLA Higher Education licence allows UCL staff to scan or photocopy extracts from a large number of books and journals. The service is managed by the library: teaching staff putting together reading lists should visit the Course Readings webpage. Please see our earlier post on how the CLA works.

Similar licences are in place for newspapers (NLA Media Access licence) and recordings (Educational Recording Agency – ERA licence/Box of Broadcasts  – BoB service).

2. Electronic journals and e-books. You don’t always need to digitise or copy. You can access (and provide links for your students) to the vast amount of electronic resources, including journal articles and e-books, e-books and digital journal articles the University subscribes to.

3. Open Access resources. You can access any Open Access journal articles, book chapters, monographs and other resources, including those held in UCL’s very own Open Access repository or published by UCL Press. If a resource is licensed under an open licence such a Creative Commons licence you don’t have to worry about limits to how much you can copy.

You may also be able to adapt the resource and share with others, depending on the terms of the licence. Visit the openverse resource, a database of over 600 million image and audio materials that are openly licensed or in the public domain: you can reuse these without permission in your research, studies and teaching. Please be sure to comply with any licence terms.

 

4. Fair dealing. For materials that are not licensed for reuse, you can consider relying on ‘fair dealing’. Essentially this means that UK copyright law allows you to use limited amounts of published materials for specific purposes, including research and educational purposes (e.g., quotation, criticism and review, illustration for instruction, examination). Use of the materials should be reasonable and appropriate to your purpose, in ways that do not damage the commercial interests of the creators/rights owners; and you should always fully acknowledge the authors and the source.

Fair dealing is a matter of interpretation and therefore you may want to seek advice if unsure. This brings us to our final point.

5. You can contact the library’s copyright team for further information and advice or to discuss a training session. We offer introductory sessions on copyright, as well as more specialised sessions  related to your theses, research and teaching. We will be sharing this term’s programme very soon. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us at copyright@ucl.ac.uk. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) will be conducting a photocopying data collection exercise at UCL in January 2020 for six weeks.

UCL holds a CLA Higher Education licence and it is part of our licence agreement that they occasionally undertake this survey; the last was held at UCL in 2010.  The purpose of the exercise is for the CLA to gather information to inform how they redistribute money to authors and publishers: it is also referred to as a ‘Royalties data’ exercise.

If you are a member of UCL staff who prepares teaching material for students, then this exercise is relevant to you!

The data collection involves a CLA field officer placing a large yellow box next to selected UCL MFDs (multi-functional devices), for teaching staff to drop in a copy of the item they are photocopying.  Near the box will be a notice to explaining the process, plus some sticky data labels.

• If you are photocopying from a UCL MFD (not digitising);
• for teaching purposes (for example making multiple copies to hand to students in class);
• and from a published resource such as a book or journal, then:

Please take a photocopy of the identifying page of the text, e.g. the front page or the reverse side with copyright information on. The information needed is title, author, publisher details, ISSN, etc.  Complete a data label, stick it to the identifying page you have just photocopied;  post this into the yellow box.  Only the identifying page is needed, not the whole extract you are copying.

 

The collection will take place from 13^th January to the 21^st February 2020: the yellow boxes will start to appear from 6th January and will be removed in the week of 24th February.

There are some FAQs below.  If any questions are not addressed here, please don’t hesitate to contact Hazel Ingrey or UCL Copyright.

 

FAQs

Why is this exercise necessary?

The CLA use this data to inform their secondary royalty payments to authors and publishers. They collect data from all institutions that hold a CLA licence and use this to pay rights holders.

 

I don’t see a yellow CLA box next to my copier.

As UCL is so large, with in excess of 800 MFDs, ISD has assisted the CLA in making a representative selection of around 170 copiers.  If there is no CLA box you don’t need to participate in the data collection.

 

I don’t photocopy for my class, only use digital readings.  Do I need to submit any extra data?

No.  If you are linking to subscribed resources through your online reading list, you are not using any licence (indeed not even copying) and don’t need to report this.

If you are using the CLA licence by digitising through the TLS course readings service, then reporting requirements are already covered for you.

 

I am photocopying for my research, do I need to add a copy to the box?

No.  The CLA licence only covers copying for teaching purposes.  If you are copying for your own private study or research, and only making one copy for your use, then you don’t need to add anything to the box.  Your copying will likely fall under a CDPA copyright exception (for example s.29) instead.

 

Can I photocopy anything?

Only published material is relevant for this exercise.  In addition, you should always bear in mind what the CLA licence actually covers when copying readings for your class (in any format).

For reassurance you can use the TLS course readings service to double-check what is covered.  More details are on the library CLA information page; you can use the CLA ‘check permissions’ search (make sure you opt for the HE licence); and the CLA User Guidelines.

Whilst this is not an audit, the CLA will be aware from the collection data if you are breaching their licence.

 

Does a studypack count?

If you are photocopying a few readings to make up a studypack, then yes!  In fact you can right now submit any study packs online to the CLA Cloud. 

Login Name:    UCL                    Password: (Please email UCL Copyright for the password)

This will remain open until 21^st February 2020.

 

Is there anything else we can do to prepare?

You could double-check that your local MFD has an up to date CLA notice poster near it, and that your colleagues are aware of the CLA licence.

 

I’m an author: how do I get paid secondary royalties from the CLA and other collecting societies?!

Salient question.  If you are an author you can join the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).  There is a sign-up fee (currently £36) and this fee is deducted from your first royalty cheque.  ALCS also take commission.

 

How do I learn more about the CLA and other licences that UCL holds?

The library also manages the NLA and ERA licences.  Do get in touch for more information on using these in your teaching.

For an overview to using copyright works in teaching or research, the UCL Copyright Support Officer Chris Holland is very happy to visit your department or student class to deliver a quick session or answer questions!

 

 

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education licence enables staff at UCL to digitise or photocopy readings for teaching purposes.

It does not cover all published material, so there are some limits to be aware of. Full details of these limits and how the TLS team checks your readings can be found on the Course Readings webpage.

Every three years the licence is re-negotiated with the help of the UUK and Guild HE Copyright Negotiation and Advisory Committee (CNAC).  The new licence period is 2019-22 and in this round there were no major changes.  One new benefit has been that negotiations with RROs in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands resulted in these country’s materials being brought into the scanning repertoire.  Another new, useful feature is that CLA copies may be made for administrative purposes that are not readings on a named module, for example UCL staff training other UCL staff.  These copies must still adhere to the usual limits but don’t need to be reported.

The licence also allows some photocopying of readings with similar limits to digitising.  Photocopying data is not collected and reported; instead UCL is subject to occasional photocopying data collection surveys.

At UCL the administration of the CLA licence is handled by the library.  The TLS team copyright checks readings to ensure they fall under the CLA licence terms, before processing PDFs or photocopies into a copyright compliant scan, which is recorded and reported to the CLA annually. To take advantage of this service please look at the Course Readings webpage.   If readings aren’t recorded through the library they are not covered by the CLA licence.

In the year 2018-19 UCL reported in excess of 6,500 digitised readings, which were delivered to students through the relevant module’s online reading list.

There is already a great deal of high quality digitised material available, from e-books and e-journals to Open Access articles in UCL’s institutional respository and UCL Press, which mean that you can sidestep copying issues altogether. Linking to a resource in an online reading list using ReadingLists@UCL will give easy access for your students, whilst avoiding headaches about licensing for you.  You don’t need a licence or permission to link to legitimate or subscribed resources.

For more information please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the TLS team!