Sourcing materials

Using hyperlinks is a very convenient way of making material available without infringing copyright. Wherever possible you should use hyperlinks on Learn rather than uploading material. Providing a hyperlink to online material is not regarded as a ‘restricted act’ in European law or English courts, as long as the material linked to is already available to the person to whom the hyperlink is provided.  

For journal articles it is recommended that you use a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This is a unique code given to an article in an e-journal when it is first published, and which can be used to make a permanent hyperlink to that article. It will continue to work even if the website of the e-journal is reorganised in the future.

For more information about linking to e-resources please contact the library for help: Loughborough students - library@lboro.ac.uk
London students - london-library@lboro.ac.uk. 

Loughborough University subscribes to several licences – these allow members of the University to copy various works in exchange for licence fees. Probably the most important is the Higher Education Licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency often referred to as the CLA.  Information on other licenses the University subscribes to can be found in the Licenses section of this website. 

For more information please contact the University Copyright and Licensing Manager.

Creative Commons is an organization which has developed a set of standard copyright licences. Owners of the copyright in works can use these licences to make the works available for members of the public to reuse free-of-charge, with more or less restriction on the extent and nature of their reuse. Creative Commons (CC) licences are normally used to license the reuse of works made available on the internet. In general CC-licensed works are easy to reuse: but of course you must read and abide by the terms of the licences that accompany them.

Creative Commons provides six different types of licence, some having generous terms of reuse. Search the Creative Commons database licensed materials or have a look at the Types of Materials section for lists of resources offering images/photos, audio/music and video/film that can be reused. 

If you use any material, please remember to attribute the work unless specified otherwise. In each case always check the terms and conditions of use. 

Sometimes the only way forward is to seek direct permission from the copyright owner. This is a last resort option, when copying the material is not covered by a licence or one of the legal exceptions. Permission is best sought in writing, i.e. by letter or by email.

When asking for permission to reuse a copyright-protected work, you should clearly state:

• who you are (i.e. your name, your job title (if any), and that you represent Loughborough University);
• what work you intend to reuse (if you only intend to reuse part of the work, you should specify this – e.g. ‘the graph on p. 10’, ‘the first five seconds of the sound-track’ etc. etc.);
• how exactly you intend to reuse the work (copy, display, perform etc.);
• in what context you intend to reuse the work, i.e. when, where, how, with whom etc. (e.g. a journal article, a video presentation at a conference,  a performance to a University society etc.);
• any other relevant detail.

Be as clear as possible so that, if and when the copyright-owner agrees, you can be sure that you have permission to do exactly what you want.

If, having obtained permission, you decide to reuse the work differently or to reuse a different work or a different part of the same work, then you must ask for permission all over again.

You should keep copies of all correspondence in case any dispute arises in future. If the copyright owner does not reply to your request, this does not imply consent: in this case you simply do not have permission.

For more information please contact the University Copyright and Licensing Manager.