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Advice on using, sharing and creating copyright-protected materials for anyone working for the NHS, including placement students.
Copyright is a type of Intellectual Property that provides protection over certain types of works. These include published articles and books (both print and electronic), unpublished manuscripts, lab notebooks and research data, dissertations, websites and blogs, reports, presentation slides, photos, diagrams and graphs, video and sound recordings, and software (for a complete list, see the UK Intellectual Property Office website).
To reproduce and reuse (e.g., include in a publication, share with others or post online) materials in which you do not own the copyright, you normally need permission or a licence from the copyright owner. You may face legal action if you do not get permission or breach the terms of a licence. However, in some specific cases you may also be able to reproduce materials without permission.
This guidance includes information on permissions, licences and copyright exceptions to support your use of materials in your research, teaching and clinical practice. The guidance is structured as FAQs built around typical scenarios arising when you are using copyright-protected resources.
FAQs
- Can I copy from a journal or book for personal use? Are there any limits?
As a Trust member, you have access to a large number of e-resources. These include e-journals, e-books and databases, which may be available to you in different ways: under a direct NHS subscription, under a UCL agreement, or for in-library access.
Copying under a copyright exception
Under UK copyright law, you can copy reasonable amounts from these resources for non-commercial research and private study. The law does not define how much you can copy. Overall the use must be "fair dealing", i.e. not excessive, justified by your purpose, and not likely to damage the market of the work. In practice, this usually means downloading or printing no more than one chapter from a book or one article from a journal issue. More guidance on this can be found on UCL’s e-resources terms and conditions page.
Please note that under this exception you may not share copies with others.
Copying under the terms of the CLA Licence for the NHS in England
A lot of journals and books that the NHS (or your UCL library) own or subscribe to will be covered by the CLA licence for the NHS in England. If a resource is covered by the licence, you may be able to copy (e.g. print, scan or photocopy) within limits specified by the licence. This has some advantages over copying under fair dealing: it allows more extensive copying from journals and, crucially, it also allows you to share copies with others under the terms of the licence.
Please see further FAQs for more information.
- How do I know if a source is covered by the CLA licence for the NHS?
The CLA licence for the NHS will apply to a lot of resources, as long as the organisation owns a copy or holds a subscription. To check whether a resource you have access to is covered by the licence, please use the CLA permissions tool. You can search for a resource by title, author, ISBN (for books) or ISSN (for journals). Choose "NHS" from the drop-down menu to specify the licence that applies. Please note that, for some sources, copying may only be allowed for specific formats i.e. from print editions only but not from digital editions.
- How much can I copy under the terms of the CLA licence for the NHS?
If the work you wish to copy is covered by the licence, you can copy up to:
- One chapter or 5% of a book, whichever is the greater.
- Two articles from a single issue of a journal.
- Any number of articles from a themed/special issue of a journal, as necessary.
Within these limits you may also make multiple copies, and copies of copies.
- Under the terms of the CLA licence for the NHS, can I share copies with others, e.g. colleagues, students or patients?
Yes, you may be able to share copies with others under the terms of the licence, as follows:
- You may share print or electronic copies with other NHS workers (including staff on temporary NHS placements) who are covered by the licence. This includes sending copies by email, or sharing over a secure network such as a password-protected intranet available to NHS users only.
- You may share single hard copies with patients and their carers or guardians, for their own personal use. Digital copies may also be shared as long as they bear a CLA copyright notice:
Here is a copy from a journal/book which you may find helpful. You may print a copy and share this with your family or carers, but for copyright reasons, you may not put it on a website or share on social media. - You may share copies with placement students for the duration of a course, as long as the students are not being charged for the course.
- As part of a specific collaborative project, you may be able to share with project partners copies of articles and book chapters you access via the NHS, or copies supplied to you under the CLA licence for the NHS. The collaboration must be declared to the CLA.
- I have accessed a journal article via my OpenAthens account. Can I share a link to this article with a colleague or student, instead of downloading and sharing a copy?
In terms of copyright, sharing a link to an article on the journal’s website is the preferred option as in this case you will not need to check whether a saved copy can be shared under the terms of a licence. Please note that, unless this is an open access article, only colleagues whose organisations subscribe to the article will be able to access it via the journal link.
- I requested a copy of an article/a book chapter from the library. Can I share this copy with someone else?
This depends on the terms under which the library is providing the copy to you. Please check those carefully, as they determine whether and how you can share the copy further.
If the copy is provided to you under the terms of the CLA licence for the NHS, you may share the copy under the terms of the licence. The licence allows you to store your own copy (for example, on your personal drive) and make further copies for other NHS colleagues in England. You may also share copies via a secure NHS network (i.e. an intranet) but not share them publicly online.
However, in some cases, for example if you have requested the copy via the Scan and Send service or via an interlibrary loan, the copy will be shared with you with a different wording, stating that the copy has been supplied to you under the terms of the Copyright Act. This is different to the CLA licence. The copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not make further copies.
- I would like to share a copy of an article/a book chapter with a collaboration partner outside the NHS. What do I do?
In some cases, you may be able to declare a collaboration project to the CLA. If the collaboration partners fulfil certain criteria, then you may be able to share copies with them. If the collaboration project does not qualify for coverage by the CLA licence for the NHS, direct permission from the copyright owner is necessary to share copies. Getting permission is also necessary for commercial use.
- How can I share and reuse open access articles?
Open access is the "free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment" (SPARC definition).
Many journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and books are open access. This means that you can access them online without a paywall. However, whether you can share copies further will depend on whether and how they are licensed for reuse.
- You can share links to lawfully shared articles and other research works that are available on institutional open access repositories (such as UCL Discovery) or subject repositories (such as PubMed Central).
- You can download, share and reuse articles and other research works shared under a Creative Commons Licence, under the terms of the licence. Many articles that are published open access are available under the Creative Commons Attribution licence, CC BY, which allows broad reuse (for example, sharing the article with students, colleagues or patients) as long as you attribute the source. It is still best practice to link to the article where possible, instead of downloading and sharing a copy.
- Some articles, book chapters and other materials, including images and websites, may be shared under a more restrictive licence. For example, the CC BY-ND licence does not allow adaptations; the CC BY-NC licence does not allow commercial reuse. If you plan to reuse content from an article (e.g. a diagram) in a publication or in an e-learning course, for example, you should look at the terms of the licence.
For more information about Creative Commons licences, please see the Creative Commons website.
- Are materials licensed under the Open Government Licence (OGL) open access? Can I share them with others?
The Open Government Licence (OGL) applies to many materials created in the public sector and shared on public sector websites, including materials created by the Department of Health and Social Care.
Materials under the OGL will include a statement such as: "All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated".
Under the OGL, you may copy, share or adapt the licensed material, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Please see the full terms of the licence.
- Do I need permission to include copyright-protected materials in my journal article?
Normally you will need permission. You should also check your publisher's own guidelines on this.
- You do not need permission to include materials that are out of copyright, original materials created by you and for which you own the rights, or materials published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence or the OGL licence. You may still need to provide evidence or a declaration that you can reuse them (e.g., a link to the open access/CC BY article).
- You normally need permission to include any other materials. If the materials were created by you and published in an article, you will still need permission to reuse them if the publisher has the copyright or an exclusive licence to your article. Similarly, you will need permission to include materials licensed under a CC BY-NC licence (as permission is required for any commercial reuse).
- If the materials were included in an article published by the same publisher as the one you are submitting to, often permission is not necessary to reuse them. Please check with your publisher.
- You submit permission requests for a lot of published content via the Copyright Clearance Centre website. You will need to create an account to do this. Some publishers prefer that you contact them directly. The STM Association has a useful set of permissions guidelines, including a list of publisher contact details with instructions on how to request permission.
- Whether permission is required or not, you should always credit the source.
- For the use of materials in different scenarios and for various audiences, please see the NHS copyright guidance.
- I am working on a research project that involves text and data mining (TDM) of multiple sources, including journal articles, policy documents, public websites, and research databases. Are there any copyright implications I should be aware of?
Yes. Please see the UCL guidance on Copyright and TDM. Currently, a UK copyright exception allows making copies of sources for the purposes of computational analysis. The research must be non-commercial and you must have lawful access to the work, e.g. via a journal subscription. To do a TDM analysis for commercial purposes, you will need permission or a licence.
It is currently legally unclear whether the TDM exception extends to using generative AI tools. Please also see relevant guidance on the NHS website.
