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By Silke Davison, Andrea Davidson and Lucy Barnes (OABN coordinators)

In November 2024, the Open Access Books Network (OABN) and the University of London Press co-organised the webinar ‘From Permission to Publication: Managing Third-Party Materials in Open Access Books’. 

The inclusion of third-party material in open access (OA) books is critical to the success of OA publishing in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS) disciplines. Books are the predominant format for sharing new research in these subjects, and in many cases images or text that were not created by the researcher—for example, artwork, maps, poetry—are essential to the arguments and analysis being made and must be included for the work to be intelligible.

The aim of this webinar was to provide attendees with a practical and solutions-focussed session on this critical issue, by inviting speakers with a variety of perspectives and experiences to reflect on the topic. As well as insightful contributions from our speakers—an author, a publisher, a legal expert and an OpenGLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) specialist—a number of useful resources and sources of information were shared, both by our speakers and by audience members (many of whom are themselves librarians, publishers, or authors). We have gathered these links and resources together in this post, and along with the recording we hope this will form a valuable resource on this essential topic.

Expert views

Our first speaker, Professor Jan M. Ziolkowski, an Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin at Harvard University and author of several OA books published by Open Book Publishers (OBP), argued that obtaining permission for using images in an academic work need not involve paying for rights, since openly licensed images can often be sourced responsibly from elsewhere, avoiding a cumbersome permissions process. Attendees pooled their knowledge of open image sources, which are listed at the end of this post. Jan also shared his process of obtaining permissions for closed-access images.

The second speaker, publisher Dr Emma Gallon, provided some insights into the third-party permissions process at the University of London Press (UoL Press). Authors are asked to provide details about what third-party content is essential for the book and whether their rights still need to be cleared when they submit their proposal. Then, after submitting their manuscript, they must supply written permissions for all the third-party content alongside the final manuscript. It is important to remember that third-party material doesn’t have to be licensed under the same license as the whole OA book; images or other material can be published under more restrictive licences, or all rights reserved, as long as this is flagged within the book by the publisher.

As well as gathering permissions, authors should consider the relevance of third-party material from the outset, said Professor Emily Hudson from the Faculty of Law and the Queen’s College at the University of Oxford, the third speaker on our panel. For example, front covers should be considered by authors early on in the writing process, because the essential connection of the image to the content of the book is more difficult to demonstrate than for images inside the book, which may be analysed directly in the text. Professor Hudson also recommended looking at the UKRI OA Policy on third-party copyright, which she co-authored and includes information about long-form outputs and addresses third-party rights. 

Our final speaker, Dr Arran Rees, representing Towards a National Collection and the Museum Data Service, gave a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) perspective on third-party permissions. He suggested that, while institutions may be under-resourced and going through a time of heavy budget cuts, open sharing of collections between libraries and other organisations could be one solution to increase the amount of shareable material, enabling authors to share high-quality third-party content without having to spend huge sums on closed-access content.

A rich discussion followed the presentations, touching on issues including ‘tombstoning’ (replacing an image or other third-party material with a black square in an OA book or article shared in a repository, e.g., see p.34: https://doi.org/10.12697/BJAH.2023.26.02); the different types of open licences that are available and the inclusion of more restrictively licensed content within openly licensed books; and specific issues attendees had experienced when publishing OA.

These brief summaries do not cover everything that was said: watch the recording to find out more.

Resources and information shared

During the session, participants were also asked about their knowledge on third-party permissions and encouraged to share their concerns and challenges through Mentimeter.

Challenges included: slow responses from rights holders; a lack of knowledge about what to ask for, what terminology to use, and where to look for openly licensed material; and a general sense that the process is overwhelming and burdensome. It was also clear that trusted sources of support are very dispersed, unless there is a knowledgeable person in your university or place of work whom you can ask for advice. Although expert colleagues are hugely valuable, this is clearly a contingent and patchy solution to the problem overall.

Attendees shared that they gather their information about third-party materials from multiple sources, including:

For openly licensed material, people go to:

This exercise also raised awareness among participants based at a university that they could get information directly from their libraries, and there was a lot of encouragement from librarians in the chat to reach out to them. 

By the end of the webinar, it was apparent that the OABN could play a useful role in supporting OA book authors with finding third-party content. This could include sharing resources such as FAQs, written guidelines, checklists, decision trees, template emails, short examples, or templates for record-keeping or tracking searches and permissions, as well as help with finding reliable open material. If you would like to help the OABN to put these resources together, please get in touch at info@oabooksnetwork.org.

There was also a desire for the OABN to host events on a similar theme in the future, looking at more detailed aspects of the third-party permissions process, such as what materials would be considered commercial versus non-commercial, or particular exceptions to general practice and how to tackle these. We will keep these ideas in mind for the future.

Other areas were identified where help is needed which lie beyond the OABN’s scope – but maybe someone reading this can respond to one or two of them! These included: 

  • Help with fees
  • Educate rights holders about the nature of scholarly OA publications
  • More UK museums with policies that clearly allow academic re-use of materials in open access publications (no quibbles)
  • Legal advice
  • Clearer policies in general on source sites
  • Strengthening of existing exceptions in UK copyright law
  • A consistent definition of ‘non-commercial use‘

We sincerely thank our speakers and attendees for sharing their knowledge and experiences with us, and we hope that this blog post is a useful resource for anyone interested in this topic. 

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