By Ciara Aaron, Editorial Assistant and Early Career Researcher, University of London Press and University of East Anglia
Disclaimer: The answers provided here do not constitute professional legal advice, and should not be substituted for such, but are suggestive of good practice in the field based on expertise shared at the ‘From Permission to Publication: Managing Third Party Materials in Open Access Books’ webinar, co-organised by the Open Access Books Network and the University of London Press and held on 19 November 2024.
Q1. Do I need permission to use third-party materials in my Open Access book?
Yes, unless the material is in the public domain, covered by an open licence (such as Creative Commons), or falls under a recognised copyright exception. Always check the rights status first.
Q2. What counts as third-party material?
Anything you did not create yourself, such as images, photographs, tables, charts, poems, song lyrics, artworks, or substantial text quotations.
Q3. What if the material is already online? Can I just use it?
No. Availability online does not equal permission. You must verify the licence terms, obtain explicit permission, or be sure that your use of the material falls under a recognised copyright exception.
Q4. What are my options if I can’t get permission and no copyright exception applies?
- Replace the copyrighted material with openly licensed or original material.
- Remove the copyrighted material.
- Use a placeholder with a citation pointing to the copyrighted material (also known as a “tombstone”).
Q5. Do copyright exceptions apply to me as an author?
Yes, some copyright exceptions (like fair dealing for text and quotation) may apply, but they are often narrowly defined. Good practice is to check with your publisher for guidance if you are unsure.
Q6. What is ‘fair dealing’ under UK copyright law?
‘Fair dealing’ refers to the right to reproduce copyrighted material in a publication for criticism and review. The law doesn’t define the type or how much material can be used under fair dealing, only that the usage should be reasonable, that this will vary on a case-by-case basis, and it shouldn’t cause the original rights holder to lose revenue. Publishers may take a conservative approach to the rule and consider fair dealing only appropriate for text and quotations but not for most images, although some publishers will consider use of an image to fall under fair dealing if analysis of the image is an important part of the text. A specific word count for text extracts may not be given by the publisher in their guidance but as a general rule it should not be a substantial portion of the whole. This will be checked carefully by the publisher before the text goes into production.
Q7. What licence should I apply to third-party materials I’ve included?
Your OA book will usually be published under a Creative Commons licence (e.g., CC BY), but third-party items can be acknowledged separately with their own licence or rights statement, including all rights reserved. Just because reproduced content appears in an OA publication it does not mean that same content needs to be subject to the same licence. This can be helpful to explain to rights holders when requesting permission to reproduce material.
Q8. How do I credit third-party materials properly?
Always provide a clear credit line, including author/creator, title, source, and licence/permission information. Rights holders will often include guidance on how they should be credited when they grant permission. Your publisher may also provide a template for this.
Q9. Who pays for permissions if there are fees?
Costs for permissions are typically covered by the author, though some funders allow use of grant funds to cover permissions for long-form publications.
Q10. What about orphan works where I can’t trace the rights holder?
Orphan works may be risky to include without permission. Your publisher will advise you on the best approach.
Q11. How early in the writing process should I think about permissions?
As early as possible. Securing rights can take months. Starting early prevents delays at submission and production stages. Make sure to keep an organised paper trail of all correspondence relating to permissions and rights as this will be a vital support until the text goes into production.
Q12. Can my publisher handle permissions for me?
Publishers usually provide guidance, but the responsibility for clearing rights lies with the author. Always confirm with your publisher what support they offer. A wide range of support should be made available to you.
Q13. Is it more difficult to receive third-party permission for material reproduced in an Open Access publication?
Not usually, no. There is very little difference between obtaining permission for an OA publication and traditional outputs: issues around nonresponsive and hard-to-trace rights holders are not specific to OA, and support from the publisher should be available to help you navigate these. In certain cases, rights holders may require fuller explanation about what OA publication involves (e.g. they may ask about a limited print-run model, or geographic/time limits on access to the published book, which may be appropriate for traditional outputs but are unsuitable for Open Access publication). In this case, the author will have to explain that the use is permanent and unlimited because the book is OA.
Q14. Outside of publisher guidance, what resources are available to help?
There are many author-focused resources available for permission request guidance which include but are not limited to the Creative Commons website, Authors Alliance, OpenGLAM and the UKRI guide.
- Publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences – Jisc
- Guidance on managing copyright under UKRI open access policy
- Authors-Alliance-Guide-to-Third-Party-Permissions.pdf
- Common myths about open access | OA Books Toolkit
- You can also watch the video recording of the event from which this FAQ was drawn, or read this summary blog post about it.
With thanks to Ciara Aaron and the University of London Press for creating this resource.
Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
This is great – thank you very much for putting this together, Ciara!