Copyright Compliance Guidance

Copyright compliance

The RSC's Library & Information Centre (LIC) provides facilities to copy from books, journals, magazines and other material within its extensive collection. Most of the material we have is subject to copyright restrictions. If you are making copies for private study or research for a non-commercial purpose, then you may:

Copy one article per issue from a journal or magazine  
Copy one chapter or 5% of a book or other published word

Unless you are authorised by the copyright holder or have an appropriate licence you may not:

Make multiple copies of articles or published works
Store the article or published work in any electronic medium
Reproduce or resell any of the content
If you want to make a copy from a library which will be used for a 'commercial-purpose' then from the 31st October, 2003 you can only do so under licence and the payment of a copyright fee. EU Directive 2001/29/EC became law in the UK as S.I. 2003 No 2498 "The Copyright and Related Rights Regulation 2003".

1. The legislation now states:
   

   "copies are supplied only to persons satisfying the librarian or archivist that they require them for the purpose of:

   -  research for a non-commercial purpose
   -  private study
   
   and will not use them for any other purpose".

   If you fulfil this requirement then you will have to sign a declaration stating this before you receive any copies. If you do not fulfil this requirement (see under 4. for guidance) then you may be asked for an extra copyright fee, payable to the publisher, in order to copy.

2. The law applies to all libraries in the UK producing copies either for use in the UK or outside of the UK. Because the copy originates in the UK overseas customers are also affected. Every library should charge the same copyright fees. The only difference will be in what the individual library charges you for this service. 
   
3. Walk-in users. Visitors to the LIC who want to make copies of extracts from books, magazine, journals or other published works and which may be used for commercial-purposes also have to pay a copyright fee. The CLA Sticker Scheme provides a simple way in which users can lawfully make a copyright-cleared copy. Instead of a publisher-specific fee walk-in users pay a flat fee of £9.00 (incl. VAT) per item. See LIC staff for details.  
   
4. What is commercial or non-commercial? This is not defined by law but a very good summary of the new regulations and some "guidance" is given by the British Library.