Lecturer and researcher - using copyright-protected material

Use of copyright-protected material

You can consider copyright from the position where you are the creator of material. You can also consider it from the position where you are the user of material holding copyright. In that case you deal with copyright limitations. The legislator has determined that there should be rules on behalf of the public interest, such as the optimal distribution of (scientific) information. The most important limitations are quotation right and exhaustion of rights.

The most important rules for higher education to use material holding copyright, have been put down in article 15 and 16 of the Copyright Act. Here is described when material can be used without the author's consent. Sometimes the user should pay the author a fair compensation, for instance when a work is included in a reader. In higher education this is arranged via the reader agreement of the Dutch Stichting PRO (Foundation PRO).

Scientific material can be used without permission to:

teach with a scientific objective
cite from work, within the publication's context
borrow parts from publications for teaching
copy for personal practice, study or use

Use of articles in readers

Including articles or other texts in readers will cost money. Tilburg University has a redemption agreement with Stichting PRO. This agreement is reassessed regularly based on all reports. The costs are charged to the faculties.

Try to limit the extent and number of short and long borrowings. This can be achieved by only using a link to the full text in Blackboard, instead of using the articles, chapters, texts of law or jurisprudence. An additional advantage is that students will not be charged for printed matters.

Stichting PRO regularly visits Tilburg University for inspection. If you do not register your borrowings or if you exceed the maximum number of words, it may lead to heavy fines!

General rules

Stichting PRO distinguishes short borrowings and long borrowings.
Short borrowing: always notify Stichting PRO, even if it is part of the redemption arrangement. You don't need to ask your faculty or Stichting PRO for permission in advance.
Long borrowings: always ask permission to your faculty in advance and report Stichting PRO by means of a permission application form.
A long borrowing is a text of more than 8,000 words from a (non-literary) journal or from 10,000 words from a (non-literary) book.
Faculties do the report at Stichting PRO. You can inquire from the faculty's office of your own faculty.
The lecturer should do a report to the faculty.
Payments of short and long borrowings are arranged by the university and the faculties.

Together with de Faculty of Law, Faculty Service (DFB) has started a test with printing on demand. If the results are positive, then printing on demand will be introduced university-wide as of 1 September 2009.

Use of copyrighted material in Blackboard

Please also read the information in Use of articles in readers.

Articles cannot be included in Blackboard freely! Also for articles or other texts in Blackboard, repro rights have to be transfered. The faculty or your department will have to pay the fees. Please ask your faculty how these costs are passed on.

Rules for insertion of full-text in Blackboard
Preferably only use a link to the full-text, possibly with abstract and source quotation. This way no costs are owed to Stichting PRO.
If you would like to use an article or another text in Blackboard nevertheless, then the following rules apply:

Each full-text article (in PDF) or scanned article (in PDF) inserted in Blackboard is always to be reported to Stichting PRO. Each insertion is to be compensated to Stichting PRO.
Short borrowing: always to be reported to Stichting PRO
Long borrowing and Kluwer publications: always ask permission to your faculty in advance and report to Stichting PRO by means of a permission application form.
Only a reasonable number of scanned articles or full-text articles can be inserted in Blackboard.
Source quotation should always be included. The source quotation should consist of: title, author and the source.
Articles can remain on Blackboard as long as the course is given.
Articles can only be made available to students and staff (the so-called authorized users) of Tilburg University.

Use of image and audio

SURF has developed the website Dutch copyright in images and audio on what are you permitted to do with images, audio and video in higher education. The website consists of six parts, each dealing with a different purpose and/or type of user:

General questions on copyright
Questions by lecturers and students on viewing, copying and downloading material
Questions by lecturers regarding the use of existing videos
Questions about media centres and (video) libraries
Questions by makers of video
Questions on clearing copyrights

Besides, SURF developed two leaflets on image and audio for lecturers and for students.

Video lectures

At Tilburg University, arrangements concerning copyright for video lectures are developing. The basic principle is that the lecturer or speaker determines what happens with the video registration and to whom it will be made available.
For guest speakers at conferences organized by Tilburg University, a consent form is already available. With this form the speaker grants permission to reuse within the university.

Plagiarism

The university has a number of house rules among which rules regarding cheating and plagiarism. On the website Cheating and plagiarism you read what is meant by cheating and plagiarism, which sanctions there are, the policy per faculty and tips for students. There is also information for lecturers and invigilators.

The website RefCite: online module on referencing and plagiarism helps you to enlarge your understanding on plagiarism. It consists of 22 pages, inclusive a quiz. Here you also find the rules for correct citing and paraphrasing.

Tilburg University has a Scientific Integrity Arrangement (only in Dutch: Regeling Wetenschappelijke Integriteit. A part of this is the unlawful exercise of intellectual property rights.

University Library