Copyright Information for Authors

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.

Journals