Copyright is part of a wider set of intellectual property (IP) rights that offer protection and certain exclusive rights to the owner(s) of the rights in a work.
Staff need to be aware of copyright issues when using other's work in their research and teaching. Academic staff should also refer to the Digital Copies website for using copyrighted digital materials such as chapters and articles in their teaching on Moodle sites as these copies need to be provided via the Digital Copies Service from the Library.
The College takes its responsibilities under copyright law very seriously. It is essential that all College staff are familiar and comply with copyright as outlined below and seek advice when unsure.
More information on copyright and where to seek further advice can be found on the library's copyright intranet pages.
When an article or a chapter is not available through one of our subscriptions, the Library will try to supply copyright-compliant copies of the items that can be added as a link to the reading lists.
To provide this service the College annually purchases the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education Comprehensive License. This allows Library staff to make scans of material held in the library, or request a copyright-fee-paid digital copy from the British Library of material not held at Royal Holloway.
Extracts are available both on and off campus and there is no limit to the number of students who can access a particular extract at one time.
Uploading content such as PDFs of articles or books to Moodle, without going through the Digital Copies service, even content the college subscribes to or owns, breaches the CLA license and copyright law.
You can find out more about Digital Copies on our staff intranet pages.
Once you submit your reading list, book chapters or articles we do not own which are marked as essential or recommended will be automatically checked to see if they are suitable for a Digital Copy. Suitable requests will be passed on to the Digital Copies team to create the digital copy.
When the Digital Copy is ready, the link will be added to the relevant item on the reading list and the list will be published.
