• UK copyright law allows anyone to make a copy from another's work for the purpose of private study, providing the original has been legally accessed and that the amount copied constitutes 'fair dealing'
  • You may also makes copies for research, providing this is for non-commercial purposes
  • You can copy the material yourself or the Library can make a copy for you. If you ask the Library, you will need to declare that you have not previously been supplied with a copy of the same material (including by another library) and you will only use the copy for private study or non-commercial research. You will also be asked to confirm that will not give copies of the material to anyone else. You can read the full declaration on the Library's copy request form
• If you have a disability and need access to a resource in an alternative, more accessible format, you can request this through the University's Disability Services. More information on this service

When including quotations from or references to others' work in your assignments and projects, you need to ensure they are fully attributed and referenced. The Library has some helpful guidance on referencing.

You might also like to consult the Library's online courses which include Introduction to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism - both of which will give you a thorough grounding in referencing and how to avoid plagiarism.

Including short, fully referenced quotations in your assignments will not infringe the copyright of the original author.

Include images

• If you are including an image in your work, it should be clearly attributed with details of both the creator of the image and the rights holder
• If you are looking for images you can legally include in your work, the Library provides access to the Artstor database, a huge library of images for use in teaching, learning and research
• You can also use Creative Commons licensed images, as long as you comply with the terms of the licence
• If you need to include an image in your assignment which is not available via Artstor and is not CC-licensed the exception for criticism or review may apply, but the use must be 'fair' and the image must be attributed

Copyright in theses and dissertations

These exceptions apply to the examination copy of an assignment, but not if you are making your work more widely available. If you are a PhD student and intending to deposit your thesis in the Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP), you need to treat this in the same way as a published output. See the section on copyright for authors: using other people's work for more information.

The following guidance on using third party materials in your teaching is based on current UK copyright law.

Risk management

• One way to be certain that you are not infringing copyright is to only use material where the rightsholder has given their explicit permission for re-use. In reality, clearing rights for everything you want to include in your teaching would be time consuming and impractical
• Fortunately, there are a number of copyright exceptions and licensing schemes which allow you to use third party content without seeking permission directly from the rightsholder. These allow you to make use of a wide range of materials, providing the use could be considered 'fair' and the amount of material is reasonable and / or within the allowed limits
• Exceptions can't cover every instance of re-use and there may still be circumstances in which you do need to ask the rightsholder, but asking permission where absolutely necessary and using exceptions for the rest will reduce the burden considerably. You should never ignore the fact that the material you are using may be protected by copyright
• When making decisions about what you can and can't use, the most important thing is to manage the amount of risk that you are exposing yourself and the University to. Consider whether the use will infringe the rightsholder's copyright and how likely it is that they would pursue a claim against you and/or the University (as your employer) if the infringement were to be identified. It is up to you to prove that a particular exception applies, not the other way round
• When deciding whether to use other people's work in your teaching (whether in a presentation / lecture or embedded in a Moodle course), you should also consider:
  • why you are including the material and how you want the students to engage with it
  • how your students will be accessing it; and
  • where they will be accessing from. If your students will be based outside of the UK when they access the material, local copyright laws will apply and you may not be able to rely on UK copyright exceptions. The exceptions in the country where the student is based may be more or less permissive than in the UK and you need to bear this in mind. Remember it is the student who will be infringing, not the University

If you have any concerns or queries about the risks involved in providing third party content to your students, please contact us at lib dot copyright at warwick dot ac dot uk.

Lecture capture

The University's guidance on the use of Lecture capture gives information on safeguarding copyright and intellectual property whilst using Lecture Capture software.

JISC have also produced guidelines on the legal implications of recording lectures.

For ease of reference, the advice on using third party materials in your teaching been divided into three sections, each covering a different category of material. Each section covers some of the key practical considerations you need to take into account:

Copyright and Intellectual Property in the outputs that you produce as a member of the University is covered by Regulation 28. This states that copyright in Scholarly Works, including text and artwork for publication in books, journal articles, papers, abstracts, theses, dissertations and creative works (such as plays and lyrics) rests with the author or creator and not with the University of Warwick.

See the full text of the regulation for other types of output, including inventions, designs, software and audiovisual materials.

Assigning copyright to a publisher

Most traditional publishing contracts require you to assign the copyright in your work to the publisher. This means that, once you have signed the author agreement, you would need the publisher’s permission to reproduce the work elsewhere.

For example, if you publish an article that you later want to include as a chapter in a research monograph, the publisher would need to agree to this. You can find out more about how request permission in the section on using other’s work in your own publications below.

Licence to publish

An alternative to assigning copyright is to grant a licence to publish. In this type of arrangement, you retain copyright, but give the publisher exclusive distribution rights. Not all publishers will offer these terms, although some publishers, for example Nature and The Royal Society, use a licence to publish as standard.

Open Access and Creative Commons licences

In Open Access publishing, authors usually retain copyright in the published output and a Creative Commons licence is applied. The CC licence lets anyone wishing to reuse your work what they are allowed to do with it without asking your permission.

• For example, applying a CC BY licence to your work means that the work can be used for any purpose, but you must be attributed
• Other licences are more restrictive, for example you can use the CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) licence to limit reuse of your work to non-commercial purposes
• Some research funders require a specific licence to be applied to published outputs
• If you are not sure which licence to apply, there is more information at Why Open Access or contact openaccessfund@warwick.ac.uk

Depending on your publisher’s policy, you may be able to deposit a copy of your work in the Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP) with a Creative Commons licence.

If someone wishes to use your work in a way not permitted by the CC BY licence, they can still ask you if you are willing to give permission, but it is up to you as the copyright holder to decide.

If you are publishing your research – or making it available online – and it includes material that is still in copyright which you did not create yourself, you must make sure that you either have the correct permissions or that you are able to clearly demonstrate that there is a relevant exception under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This includes making a copy of your PhD thesis available via Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP). You cannot rely on educational exceptions to copyright law if your work is being made public, we have more guidance on thesis submission available.

Quotation, criticism and review

You may be able to use some material created by a third party under the ‘fair dealing’ provision. So, for example, if you are quoting from a work so you can critique it, this would be classed as criticism and review and would not need permission. However, this must be reasonable, so you may need to contact the copyright holder if you are reproducing a longer passage. If you are not sure whether the amount is reasonable or not, consider how you would feel if it was your own work.

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers has produced some useful guidance on quotations and excerpts.

Request permission