Copyright information

It is important that staff take steps not to infringe the copyright of others when making material available either to students, others in their department or to the public. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) is in force in the UK and should be considered when copying (photocopying or scanning) any work for which you or the LSE are not the copyright owner.

A short guide to copyright for LSE staff is available online and staff should be directed to this guide if they have any queries.

Introduction to copyright

Copyright exists in a wide range of literacy and artistic works and applies equally to material on the Internet as it does to published books and journals. The copyright symbol © is often used to identify a copyright owner but the absence of this symbol does not mean a work has no copyright. Copyright in literary works usually lasts for 70 years after the death of an author, however different rules apply for other types of media. Photocopying for private, non-commercial research and study is usually covered by a provision in the law called ‘Fair Dealing’, which allows a single copy of a small amount of a work (typically not more than 10%) to be copied. However, copying for class use is not covered by this provision (see below).

Photocopying for class use

Multiple copying for educational use, for example, producing photocopies of a single journal article for a class, or producing a paper course pack can be undertaken under the School’s Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education Photocopying Licence. This licence covers most UK publishers and some overseas publishers, however further advice about what is covered by this licence can be sought from Library.Teaching.Support@lse.ac.uk.

See Copyright and licences for further details. Alternatively full details about the CLA Licence are available in the CLA Licence Guidelines (PDF).

Scanning material for use in the VLE (Moodle or WebCT

Staff within departments should not scan any copyright material for distribution either through public folders or the School's virtual learning environment - Moodle and WebCT. A copyright permission and scanning service is available from the Centre for Learning Technology and further advice and help is available from clt-support@lse.ac.uk

Scanning material for use in online courses (Moodle)

Staff within departments should not scan any copyright material for distribution either through public folders or the School’s virtual learning environment – Moodle. A copyright permission and scanning service is available from the Library and further details about this service are available from Electronic course pack services. If you have any queries about this service please contact epacks@lse.ac.uk.

Using electronic journals/ downloading from the web

Any material downloaded from an electronic journal or from a website is usually subject to a licence which means it can usually only be used for private research and study. If you wish to make any library materials available to students in electronic format you should contact your Liaison Librarian or the Centre for Learning Technology (clt-support@lse.ac.uk) for further advice.

Copyright advice and training

Copyright training courses are available for all staff through the Teaching and Learning Centre events programme, see: http://www.tlcevents.lse.ac.uk/. Sessions covering an Introduction to Copyright and Copyright, the Internet and teaching online are offered. Copyright queries can be directed to several different people in the School and a list of contacts is available at Where to go for more advice.

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