USask authors do not always need to ask for permission, or pay an extra fee, to reuse a published figure or image in their own publications. The reuse needs to be for non-commercial personal, scholarly, or educational purposes and without modifications to the reused content. The University Library, through our consortial partners (CRKN and COPPUL), has negotiated this right for USask authors in many of our licenses for journal subscriptions.

List of publishers/journals this applies to:

• American Chemical Society (ACS)
• Annual Reviews
• Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Canadian Science Publishing (CSP)
• Institute of Physics (IOP)
• JSTOR
• Nature Journals
• Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Palgrave Macmillan Journals
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)*
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• Sage Premier Journals
• Scientific American
• SpringerLink and Adis Journals
• Springer eBooks and Protocols
• Wiley Blackwell

How to take advantage of this right

Authors re-using figures or other content should still properly attribute their source through the normal citation practices of their disciplines. Permissions should still be sought if content being reused indicates a copyright holder other than the publisher. If the publication or individual article is open access then adhere to the terms of the CC license applied. (All CC licenses will permit at least the same rights as we have described here).

If a publisher wants evidence of the permission to reuse figures or tables from the journals of these publishers, authors can indicate permission was granted through a license signed by USask’s University Library with the publisher for access to the journals at USask and can point journal editors to this web page. Any further inquiries can be directed to the contact email below.

Other permissions guidelines

The STM association of publishers has a reciprocal Permissions Guidelines protocol. Publisher members can become “Signatories” to the Guidelines which will then allow authors of other Signatory members to use “limited amounts of material in other original published works without charge, and with a minimum of effort needed for permissions clearance.” See the link for a list of the current Signatories. Many of these publishers still require notification from authors of the intended use (though do not require authors to seek permission), and some list exceptions of specific content to which the Guidelines do not apply. See the Permissions Guidelines document (available on the link above) for more details.

If you do need to ask permission

If your use of a copyright-protected figure or image is not covered by an existing license, you should seek permission directly from the copyright owner (authors often transfer their copyright to the publisher). The best place to start is on the publisher’s website, as many publishers have an online form that you can fill out to request permission. See getting permission from a copyright owner for more guidance on this including a permission request template if needed.

Other rights for USask researchers in our library licenses

Other rights for users of journals exist in our library licenses. Rights for uses such as text and data mining (TDM) tend to have much more detailed and specialized clauses from publisher to publisher. If you wish to employ TDM in your research, or have other questions about licenses and what they enable you to do, please contact us.

The text on this page was adapted with permission from MIT Libraries.

Send an email to figure.reuse@library.usask.ca.