Copyright

The use of materials protected by copyright is essential to the learning process. Educational resources exist in all formats and are recognised as 'works' in copyright law.

The library has developed the GCU UK Copyright Advisor which provides online advice.

If you are developing teaching materials for in person use or for use in GCU's virtual learning environments, the library has a series of services that can provide support and assist with copyright considerations:

Resource Lists at GCU is the University's in-house resource list management system. It allows lecturers to create structured, annotated resource lists that contain a wide variety of different resource types.
The library scanning service helps you make book chapters and journal articles more easily accessible for your students.

To minimise the burden on teachers and students who want to make use of copyright materials as part of their teaching and learning experience, the law includes a number of exceptions that allow for the use of all types of copyright work for certain educational purposes. Exceptions only apply if no other legal agreement exists (such as the CLA licence).

The most important exception for education permits the use of any type of work for the purpose of teaching. This means that copyright in the work is not infringed by an individual teacher or a student as long as they are copying the work to give or receive instruction (or when preparing to give or receive instruction), and the copying is used to illustrate a point about the subject being taught. Also, the law makes clear that 'giving or receiving instruction' allows copying when setting examination questions, communicating questions to students, and answering questions.

However, the exception only applies under the following conditions:

The purpose of the use is non-commercial
Where practical, there should be sufficient acknowledgement of authorship of the work
The use of the material is fair.

There is no legal definition of what is fair or unfair in this context. It is an issue ultimately decided by courts depending on a number of factors, such as the amount of the work taken and whether the use would commercially compete with the copyright owner’s exploitation of the material. According to the UK government 'minor uses, such as displaying a few lines of poetry on an interactive whiteboard, will be permitted, but uses which would undermine sales of teaching materials will still need a licence'. Please view the UK government's guide on exceptions to copyright for more information (please note that linked content from external sources may not meet all digital accessibility requirements).

The above content (under the heading 'Copyright exceptions for education') has been adapted from "Education" by Ruth Soetendorp and Bartolomeo Meletti, licensed under CC BY 3.0.

For further information on copyright in higher education visit the Copyright User website. The library can also provide copyright advice, please email libraryresearch@gcu.ac.uk