Quick guide to copyright and licensing for e-journals

Copyright and licensing

The University’s CLA licence applies to copying from e-journals to which the Libraries subscribe and that are part of the CLA’s repertoire.

Downloading and printing

The normal copyright rules apply: a single copy of one article per issue may be downloaded or printed from an e-journal, for personal use (non-commercial research or private study). Downloading or printing multiple copies or whole journal volumes is not permitted.

Use of extracts for teaching and study purposes

You may make multiple copies of hard copy and electronic publications that are held by a University library or to which a University library provides access under a licence and that are part of the CLA’s repertoire.

You can check whether a work is part of the repertoire using the check permissions search service.

You may copy (including by scanning to digital if no digital version is held or available) a single article from an issue of a journal or the greater of 10% or one chapter of another publication and make it available as hard copies or online using a secure service, such as Weblearn or Canvas, to staff and students for a particular course of study.

Each copy must carry appropriate acknowledgement and the copying must be included in the figures reported to the CLA, unless they are reading list copies made available via Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO).

Cutting and pasting for teaching or study purposes

Our institutional subscription licences for the e-journal collections listed below permit Oxford University members to include all or part of an article in printed or online teaching materials and coursework providing it is unaltered and appropriately acknowledged:

  • American Chemical Society (ACS)
  • American Institute of Physics (AIP)
  • Annual Reviews
  • BioOne
  • Blackwell Publishing
  • BMJ Publishing Group
  • Cambridge University Press (CUP)
  • Cell Press (Elsevier)
  • Elsevier
  • Institute of Physics (IoP)
  • International Union of Crystallography
  • John Wiley
  • Johns Hopkins University Press
  • JSTOR
  • Nature Publishing Group
  • New England Journal of Medicine
  • Oxford University Press (OUP)
  • Portland Press Limited
  • Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
  • SAGE Publications
  • Science (AAAS)
  • Springer

This adds up to thousands of journals, all accessible through the OU e-journals list. Any course materials viewed online must be through secure authenticated access (e.g. WebLearn or Canvas). Staff may reproduce illustrative material from these e-journals (e.g. figures, tables, structures) for lecture slides or handouts or WebLearn/Canvas. Acknowledgement should include title of article, author, journal title, volume/issue, publisher, date and copyright holder [ © ].

A sample licence

Many of the publishers above abide by the Model Licences negotiated by the JISC for UK Higher Education.

Images and other permissions requests

Other publishers (such as learned societies) are less likely to extend their standard permissions beyond personal use so you should check their terms and conditions for institutional subscribers and contact them if necessary.

Images, especially photographs or complex illustrations such as anatomical drawings, may still require normal permissions requests of publishers (or other copyright holder) as the journal article author is unlikely to own the copyright.

Making direct links to e-journal articles

Teaching staff may wish to create links in WebLearn or Canvas to e-journal articles. This is preferred to making or distributing electronic copies to students.

Full-text databases

The Bodleian Libraries also subscribes to around 30 full-text databases under the JISC Model Licence. This allows University members to include links or extracts in WebLearn/Canvas or in course packs, with appropriate acknowledgement of the source in each case.

These databases, all accessible via the Libraries' Databases A-Z list, include among others:

  • Archival Sound Recordings
  • ARTstor
  • Credo Reference
  • Early English Books Online
  • Eighteenth Century Collections Online
  • Grove Art Online
  • Grove Music Online
  • Nineteenth Century Newspapers
  • Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Oxford English Dictionary
  • Oxford Reference Online
  • Oxford Scholarship Online
  • Times Digital Archive

For queries about publishers not mentioned in this guide please contact eresources@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Further information about copyright see our complete guide or contact copyright@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

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