Category: Open Access

How do I find a legal version of an e-publication?

22 December 2021 /

Some authors often upload their published version on ReseachGate and academia.edu when transferring their copyright to the publisher.

ReseachGate and academia.edu are commercial platforms, and most publishers do not allow authors to upload articles on those platforms because the existence of a published PDF online will cause them to lose income. There have been instances of publishers suing universities and authors for copyright breaches.

We cannot provide hyperlinks to documents posted on those platforms because linking to illegally posted sources online is unlawful.

So, what are the options?

  1. Check if the library has the publication. If it is a journal article, then if we subscribe, you can provide the DOI to the article (starting with http://dx.doi.org/…). If it is a book, you may provide the permalink from Locate.
  2. Find the publication on an institutional repository: a) look at the afflation of the authors. If it is from the UK or Europe and it is a post-2014 publication, likely, a version is legally deposited in the affiliated institutional repository; b) search on the browser for the name of the affiliation (e.g. “Coventry University”) plus the word ‘repository’. It will give you the link to the institutional repository; c) search for the title or author, and you may find the record and PDF; d) share that link openly.

What about hyperlinks and copyright?

How do I link to e-published articles?

Why shouldn’t we link directly to PDFs?

How do I reference sources?

What about hyperlinks and copyright?

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

What are Open Educational Resources?

13 December 2021 /

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are shared at no cost with legal permissions for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content (either in the public domain or under a CC licence permitting derivative works, such as CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA.

Educational resources are open when providing the public with permission to engage in the 5R activities:

  1. Retain – permission to make, own and control copies of the content (download, duplicate, store and manage)
  2. Reuse – permission to use the content in many ways (class, study group, website and video)
  3. Revise – permission to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (translate into another language)
  4. Remix – permission to combine content with other material to create something new (mashup)
  5. Redistribute – permission to share the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.

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