Copyright : a practical guide

This guide provides practical advice for University of Dundee staff and students, to help you protect your own copyright and stay legal when using copyright material.

• Choose from the tabs on the left for advice about common HE scenarios where copyright material is often used.
• Read the University's position on Copyright
• Or contact us to discuss your specific case.

1. Include the eJournal article, eBook or other web-based resource on the online Resource/Reading List for the module – all reading material should be on an online Resource/ Reading List (https://resourcelists.dundee.ac.uk) which is linked to your MyDundee/Moodle module.
2. On the rare occasions where you want to point students to a resource but don’t want to include it on an online Reading List, you should add a direct link to the URL of the eJournal article, eBook or other web-based resource in MyDundee (or other VLE).
3. Request from the LLC a digitised copy of any book chapter, journal article or other extract we don’t have access to in digital form (click on Digitization Request on your online Resource/Reading List)
4. Only use images or audio/video resources you yourself have created, or to which you hold the copyright, or which are available under a Creative Commons licence or in the Public Domain – if these don’t exist, contact the copyright-holder directly to request use of any resources which they indicate that they own
5. Always attribute the source of any resource which you use
6. Never upload a pdf of a published article or book chapter to MyDundee unless the resource is explicitly licensed through Creative Commons, in the Public Domain or available via any other Open Access arrangement
7. Never make a digital copy of a journal article or book chapter yourself
8. Only use an image or audio/video resource or other material from the Internet which is available under Creative Commons licence, in the Public Domain or to which you have been explicitly granted permission to use by the copyright-holder
9. While you can use PowerPoint or other presentation tools in class, you should only upload them to the VLE or record voice-over screen recordings if you are sure that all content can be legally shared – you may need to strip out any content which you do not have right to use before uploading or screen recording
10. Distance learning students overseas may access resources via  Resource/Reading Lists/MyDundee while they are matriculated with Dundee University. Students studying with partner Universities on 4+1/3+1+1 programmes may use online 3^rd Party content (i.e. published in books/journals) provided by Dundee University once they matriculate on the Dundee portion of their programme.
    • For fully matriculated Distance Learners, note that there are occasional restrictions on use of some resources outside the UK, usually (but not exclusively) for off-air recordings of TV or Radio programmes

 This LibGuide has been adapted from ‘Copyright: a practical guide’, University of York 2024