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Getting permission to reuse content

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If you have included anything in your article that you did not create yourself, you may need to obtain permission to publish it in a journal. There are a few things that will determine whether you need to receive official permission to reuse content that has previously been published.

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What don’t I need permission to publish?

  • Creative Commons content: you can reuse any content published under a Creative Commons licence without seeking permission from the copyright holder. These licences may limit how you can use the content though, so it's always good to check for any restrictions. There are details on what each of the different Creative Commons licences mean here. You'll also need to provide an attribution to the original author or copyright holder – don't forget to add that to your caption.

    Keep in mind that images, figures, tables etc. in Open Access articles aren't always freely available for reuse. It's always best to check the captions to see if the authors provided any copyright attributions.

  • Your own images, figures or tables: if you've created something specifically for your article, then you don't need any sort of permission for it. If you would like to make sure that you retain the copyright for that content, check whether your publisher can accommodate this. For EUP, you'll just need to add '© Author name' or 'Copyright Author name' to the caption for your image.
  • Out-of-copyright content: in the UK, copyright for a work usually expires 70 years after the death of the creator. In some cases, the copyright may last longer (the most famous example of this being the copyright for Peter Pan, which is held in perpetuity by Great Ormond Street Hospital). If you are using content that you believe to be out of copyright, it's useful to check whether you're using an updated version – annotated, altered or digitised materials can sometimes be copyrighted, even if the original is no longer under copyright. Once something is out of copyright though, you can use it without obtaining permission.
  • Written content: for the most part, you won't need to receive permission to use any written text that you quote in your article. Reuse of small quotes within an academic manuscript is covered by 'Fair Use' or 'Fair Dealing'. If you're using a significant portion of a piece of text though (for example, a full poem), you may need to consider whether permission should be requested. In general, up to 800 words of text from a single source can be quoted throughout your manuscript (or a single quotation of up to 250 words) without you needing to worry about it – assuming that this is less than 25% of the source material. Rules can differ for different types of content (for example, you won't be able to quote as much from a 20 line poem as you would from a 200 page novel) and from publisher to publisher though. You can find out more about reusing text from published sources here and it's always worth checking any guidance provided by the publisher.

How do I get permission to use content?

If the content that you're reusing doesn't fall into any of the above categories, you'll need to seek permission to use it in your article.

Finding the copyright holder

The first step in getting permission to reuse content in your article is to find out who the copyright holder is. In many cases, this will be clear and won't require any digging – for example when you've taken the image or figure directly from the first place it was published.

Sometimes, you might need to do a little bit of detective work to find the copyright holder though. This is often the case when you want to reuse an image that you know from a website, book or article, but that wasn't originally created for that work. When that happens, you should:

  • Check the caption: a correctly credited image, figure or table should attribute the work to the original creator in the caption. If you're lucky, and the content you're reusing is digital, there may be a direct link to the original version.
  • Check the footnotes or endnotes: if there is no copyright attribution in the caption, the next place to look is the footnotes or endnotes for the piece that the content was used in.
  • Check the citations: a final place to look within a book or article for information about the copyright holder for something that you want to reuse is the citations list. The copyright information shouldn't show up here, but in some cases it does.
  • Ask the author or website owner: if you can't find any copyright information for the content you want to reuse, the next step is to contact the author of the piece that you have seen it in. It may be that they are the original creator and can grant you permission. If not, they should be able to direct you to where they found the image or figure.
  • Look for a 'permissions' page on the website: If you can't get in touch with the author of a book or article, look on the publisher's website for information about requesting permissions. This may lead you to fill out a form with information about the content you wish to reuse. You can request permission to reuse EUP content here. Some websites will have similar pages to provide information about obtaining reuse permissions.

What to ask the copyright holder for

As with many elements of this guide, the level of permissions that you need to request from the copyright holder will change depending on the journal you're publishing in. For EUP journals, you'll need to be granted permission to use items within the context of your article:

  • in all geographical regions of the world
  • in all formats including electronic
  • in perpetuity, including the online version

This may seem like a lot to ask for, but it's necessary for us to be able to publish the content. The restrictions that would need to be made to your work without all of these permissions simply aren't practical, so it's important that the copyright holder grants all of them.

You should also ask the copyright holder if they have any preferences for how their work is attributed. Make sure to follow their request in the caption that you provide for their image, figure or table.

Where to now?

Getting permission to reuse content | Edinburgh University Press