6 things you might not know about your Further Education Licence

Of course you will be familiar with the key features of the CLA Education Licence – that you can photocopy, print out, scan and digitally copy up to 5% of a publication your institutions owns. But there’s a couple of hidden gems to remember about your licence to help you make the most of its permissions.

The Licence repertoire is VAST

The majority of books published in the UK are included in the Licence. But CLA also has agreements with our overseas equivalents, which means licensees can also copy from their repertoire too. At present we have 44 reciprocal agreements with countries around the world, which means content users can copy from publications published in more than 41 international territories, and our repertoire runs to millions of titles. So don’t be put off by looking further afield for your materials.

Our list of international agreements can be found here.

Owning it

The licence conditions say that material to be copied from must be owned or subscribed to by the institution. If you don’t own it, what then? Well you can purchase a Copyright Fee Paid (CFP) copy of the chapter or article you’re interested in copying via the British Library and CLA’s EHESS for FE service. This will act as ownership as far as the Licence is concerned. And remember, if you make a copy from something and then later decide to get rid of that book or subscription, you can still keep the copy – you owned the source at the point of making the copy.

Copies aren’t just for study packs

One of the most common questions we are asked at CLA is about copyright compliant images in presentations. Not only does CLA have a helpful guide to using images, but images included in publications covered by the licence are fine to copy too. So when your search engine isn’t returning you a reliable copyright-free image, remember that you can copy under the Licence.

Margin notes

The Licence covers you to annotate material. So if a lecturer would rather issue a copy and ask questions right next to the text, rather than students referring back to a presentation slide, digging out another sheet of paper, or referring to a different email, then that’s no problem – that’s covered by the Licence.

Expanding access

For print disabled students, a copy can be made of a whole book under the Licence. The copy needs to be made for a particular student with a visual impairment, and should not be issued to the whole cohort, but nevertheless the whole work can be copied. In line with the Marrakesh Treaty, there is no longer a need to check if a copy is already commercially available.

Peace of Mind

Finally, clause 11 of the Education Licence details the indemnity licensees are offered in case of a copyright dispute. We hope that no one needs to rely on it, but it’s always reassuring to know it’s there nonetheless.

CLA Further Education Licence

Find out more