Processes for digital copying

If you’re making digital copies, or making them available, make sure that you’re familiar with this section.

Before making digital copies, we recommend that you check that the CLA Education Licence permits scanning from the source copy or sharing copies from a digital publication.

 

How can I store digital copies and make them available?

It’s important to ensure that digital copies aren’t accessible to anyone outside your organisation, by making them available via a secure, password-protected network – usually your VLE. Storage must also be secure – either via your VLE or another secure environment. You can store and make available digital copies for the full duration of a student’s degree programme.

Where possible, you should place digital copies in secure, course-specific collections. All staff and students at your organisation are entitled to view digital copies, but only ‘Course Users’ (those students taking the course in question, and those staff teaching it) are additionally entitled to download and print.

If it’s impractical to lock down access in this way, that’s fine, so long as a Copyright Notice is in place; we’d also advise adding some extra wording to the effect that the digital copy ‘should not be downloaded or printed out by anyone other than a student enrolled on the named course or a member of staff teaching it’.

You can cite digital copies in an online reading list, and provide hyperlinks via your VLE. This is permitted under the Licence.

You can also do the following:

• Send a digital copy to a Course User by sending it to his/her secure e-mail address as an attachment.
• Use digital copies in the lecture theatre or classroom with a digital whiteboard/projector and presentation software to illustrate a lecture or tutorial (provided that only Course Users are attending).
• Make digital copies available via a secure, password-protected online platform such as Dropbox.
• Distribute digital copies on USB sticks (and other removable/portable storage media), provided that one copy only is delivered to each Course User.

Reporting and managing digital copies (applicable to CLA Higher Education Licensees only)

If you are a CLA Higher Education Licensee, please bear in mind is that any digital copies you make for a Course of Study are subject to cyclical reporting arrangements agreed between CLA and the UUK/GuildHE CNAC. Our Guide to Reporting and Managing Digital Copies outlines all of your HEI’s obligations in this area.

If you are an HEI that uses our Digital Content Store or a system provided by a third party that has signed our TPTP (Third Party Technology Provider) agreement, many of the processes described here will be automated.

Note that this section applies to digital copies made for students and staff in connection with Courses of Study (i.e. ‘Course Users’). Other types of copies, such as press cuttings and those made for marketing or HR purposes, are not subject to the same reporting requirements and do not require a Copyright Notice.

This text is intended for use as guidance only and not as a substitute for the CLA Licence terms themselves, which should be read in full. In the event of conflict between the two, the Licence shall prevail. For permissions not listed above, please contact the publisher direct.