Reserves and Copyright

Table of Contents

• About
• Public Domain
• Permissions
• Content from Databases and eJournals
• Content from the Web
• Faculty Created Content

About 

All content placed on Course Reserves must comply with U.S. copyright law.  

If you are an instructor wishing to post copyrighted content (including journal articles, book chapters, multimedia, etc.) for which you do not hold the copyright, you are required by university policy to use the Course Reserves system so that library staff can help with public domain and fair use determinations, permissions, and other  issues, as needed. Libraries Reserves staff are available at reserves@emory.edu to answer any reserves-related questions.

Content that is licensed by the Libraries, such as ebooks and chapters, ejournals and articles, or database entries, should never be downloaded and posted directly in Canvas or to Course Reserves. Instead, instructors should post a link to the item so that students can log in to access the e-resource.

Content that is openly licensed—such as open educational resources (OER) carrying a Creative Commons license—can be uploaded directly to Canvas. The Scholarly Communications Office is available at scholcomm@listserv.cc.emory.edu to help with questions about OER and open licenses. 

Public Domain 

The “public domain” refers to content not protected by copyright. Anyone can use public-domain content without permission. 

How do you know if something is in the public domain?

• Any content (except sound recordings) published in the United States prior to 1930 is in the public domain; or
• Any content created by an employee of the U.S. federal government, in their official capacity, is in the public domain regardless of the year of creation or publication.

For unpublished or foreign content, please refer to Cornell University Library's Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States.

Permissions 

What if the content you want to share is not in the public domain? Content protected by copyright can be posted on Course Reserves either as a fair use or with permission from the copyright owner.

If Reserves staff determine content on Course Reserves exceeds our guidelines, the Libraries will seek and pay applicable permissions fees on the content as a service for the faculty and students. The Libraries have a special fund to pay for permissions for Course Reserves to support classroom instruction.

Content from Databases and eJournals 

Want to share an article from an Emory Libraries database or electronic journal? Emory Libraries Reserves Policy asks that you link to any database or electronic journal content rather than uploading a full-text PDF in Course Reserves or Canvas.

The Emory Libraries provide access to databases and electronic journals through subscriptions with vendors. The Libraries' license agreement with each vendor specifies how faculty, staff, and students can use the content in the database or ejournal, including whether or not content may be downloaded and reposted to an electronic course reserves system. Since there are so many licenses to consider, we ask that you link rather than downloading the PDF and uploading it into Course Reserves.

Reserves staff review uploaded content and will change uploaded licensed content to links or remove it.

Content from the Web 

When including web resources, simply link to the webpage from Course Reserves or Canvas. Linking is almost always preferable to scanning or making a digital copy. Even with links, it's important to verify that the content was shared online with the permission of the copyright holder(s). As previously noted, however, openly licensed content such as OER with Creative Commons licenses can be directly uploaded.  

You should assume that all content published on the web is copyrighted. Therefore, unless the webpage specifies that anyone can use the work in any way or the work is openly licensed, assume that “all rights are reserved.”

Faculty-Created Content 

Faculty-created content can be included in Course Reserves as long as the faculty member retained copyright to the content. This content includes exams, quizzes, course notes, course syllabi, journal articles, and book chapters.

Many publishers use author agreements requiring authors to transfer all their rights in the work, including copyright, to the publisher. If you transferred your copyright to the publisher, we may have to ask their permission to post your journal article or book chapter in Course Reserves.

For more information about copyright, fair use, or permissions, please see the Emory Libraries Scholarly Communications Office webpages.