General Policy
Authors of manuscripts accepted for publication in the
Society’s peer-reviewed academic journals are required to complete an
Assignment of Copyright form.
Copyright assignment is designed to allow the Society as publisher
to deal centrally with the bureaucratic apparatus and to obtain some
income from photocopying which goes to support the publications
programme. The alternative is that the author’s permission must be
sought in each case. If we put our publications on the prohibited list,
libraries will be legally unable to photocopy them and this is seen as
unnecessarily obstructive. The end result is that material from other
publications will be used in its place and/or readers will be tempted
to obtain illegal photocopies.
Copyright legislation is aimed
at allowing readers easier and more legal access to photocopies of
single articles without going through the tedious business of asking
the publisher’s permission each time. In order to facilitate use of
material from its publications the Society has signed agreements with
reputable information services allowing them to supply single copies of
the full text of individual articles at a modest fee on which a small
royalty is payable to the Society.
Under similar circumstances,
libraries are able to offer photocopying services for single articles
for research or to be handed out as course notes under blanket
licensing agreements with the Copyright Licensing Agency (in the UK)
and the Copyright Clearance Center (in the US) and under reciprocal
agreements throughout the EC. Libraries pay a fee assessed on their
photocopying activity and a portion of this fee is allocated to each
title registered. Since money is usually paid per title, it is not
possible to allocate the modest income received to individual articles
and therefore to individual authors. Since such schemes are blanket, it
is not possible to exclude any particular article from being copied.
Permitted Use
It is the Society’s policy to allow authors to re-use their own work
as they see fit. Authors do not need to seek permission from the
Society to photocopy their own work or use it as part of a course pack
for teaching purposes. Re-use of part or all of an article by an author
in other publications written, edited or compiled by them is also
permitted but republication of whole articles is not permitted until 6
months after hard-copy publication in the Society’s journal. Such
permission is subject to the restrictions stipulated in the author
self-archive/open access policy detailed below, and the journal must
also be acknowledged as the original published source of the material
in the following format:
‘Reproduced with permission from [journal name] © The British Psychological Society [year]'.
Author Self-Archive/Open Access Policy
Authors are encouraged to place a copy of their article on an
institutional or other repository 6 months after publication in the
journal, subject to the permitted use conditions above. However, it is
not permitted for
authors to use the final proofed and typeset version of the article for
this purpose. They are required instead to use the postprint version
of the paper (the final accepted version of the paper after peer review
but before proofreading and typesetting). In addition, at least one link must also
be provided to the published version of the article on the Society’s
website from the repository.
Third Party Use
Where permission is sought for quotation in whole or in part in a
third party’s publication, this will be contingent upon that party
seeking the Society’s written consent [where the Society holds the
copyright]; permission will not be unreasonably withheld.
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