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Copyright for Teaching

The CLA

The Copyright Licencing Agency CLA offers a Higher Education a licensing scheme that permits us to copy and distribute copies (as educational readings) from titles by many UK publishers and a number of US and international publishers. It covers books, journals, magazines and certain digital publications.  

To check if a title is included go to the CLA Higher Education title lookup and enter the ISBN or ISSN of the item, or the title. To supply a copy of a  PDF (as most of our titles are electronic) you must check that digital copying is permitted. There are certain specific title exclusions and the rights can change. The Library can advise. There are restrictions and reporting requirements:

  • We must obey the CLA's quantity limits: 10% of a book or 1 chapter, (or whichever is greater,) and 10% or up to two articles from a journal issue. The law has just change to permit a special issue on one topic to be included. If you need a larger quantity get in touch with the Library.
  • The LBS must own (print) or have access to (electronic) an “institutional” copy of the item. If a title is OK to copy under the CLA licence but we don’t have a copy/subscription contact the Library, we can usually obtain materials.)
  • We must use the published version - not a pre-print.
  • We must supply the PDF in a secure (pass-word protected) environment.i.e. Canvas.
  • We must supply the item with a CLA cover sheet with bibiographic and course details - the DCS does this automatically.
  • We must inform the CLA annually in detail what was copied so the publishers and authors receive payment. The DCS does this automatically for degree courses.

The DCS
We use the CLA's Document Content Store (DCS) to store our scans and it outputs links for each item to use in Canvas. When the Library upload a chapter to the DCS we must add the course details,and bibliographic details for the system to auto-generate cover sheet. So each  link is specific to the course.  We don't need to keep our own records of items supplied in this way as the DCS produces a detailed annual return. This data is collected in order pay publishers and authors.

Engagement with readings
Looking at the CLS annual return produced by the DCS we can see how many students viewed or opened a document. 

If an e-book is available then it should be used - we can link to the book at title or chapter level.

Terms and conditions of the CLA Licence