Legal advice

Where possible, lecturers should provide links to online resources rather than making copies. Where it is essential to make a copy, or a work is only available in print, follow the guidance below.

This guidance covers normal teaching situations: teaching in the classroom, preparing slides and making slides or lecture recordings available on a VLE.

If you want to make your teaching materials or lecture recordings openly available on the internet then seek permission to reuse any copyrighted materials. Imperial's licences only cover use by Imperial staff and students.

For a quick guide, follow these Copyright tips for online learning.

Material type

Short extracts

UK Copyright Law contains an exception 'Illustration for instruction'. This enables you to use small amounts of copyrighted content in your slides and other teaching materials without requesting permission from the copyright holder.

To be able to defend your use of copyrighted content as illustration for instruction your copying must be:

  • for instruction or preparing instruction
  • fair to the copyright holder
  • non-commercial (e.g. teaching Imperial students)
  • the extract must be fully cited and referenced

A publisher’s contract cannot override this exception.

Journal papers and single book chapters

Imperial has a Copyright Licensing Agency Higher Education Licence. This enables:

  • lecturers and course administrators to provide each student with a single printed copy of a journal article or a book chapter, if it is part of the Library’s collection

and

  • Library Services to make a digital copy of a journal article or a book chapter, that is part of the Library's collection, available to students on your VLE

The licence does not include permission to make copies publicly available on the internet.

To check if a book or journal title is covered by the licence use the CLA’s Check permissions tool.

Use Leganto reading lists to request a digital reading for your students.

Web based materials

If you use content from the internet, your use is dictated by UK Copyright Law and the licence displayed on the website, usually in the Terms of use in the footer.

Imperial's licences do not cover this use.

Films, videos and TV

A legal copyright exception (S34) allows you to show students TV programmes, films and videos for educational reasons, for example during a lecture or as a separate educational screening. The exception does not extend to format shifting a DVD for online streaming on a virtual learning environment, such as Blackboard, Moodle or Insendi.

The safest way to show students TV and film is to use Box of Broadcasts, which provides legal on-demand TV and radio, including films, for universities to use in educational activities. If you are unable to find what you want here, see FAQ How should I ask students to watch a film for their course?.

Do not provide links to pirate copies on file servers or illegal uploads on YouTube, as this puts you and Imperial at risk. You may also find that the film or TV clip may have disappeared when the student wants to watch the film.

Photos and images

Some images are free to use and others are of high commercial value because they belong to professional photographers and stock photography companies such as Shutterstock and Getty images

Photographers and stock photography agencies make their living by selling images and will therefore bill you for unauthorised use of their images. Before copying and pasting an image into your online course module or conference slides, always read the copyright and licensing information within the image metadata and read the website’s terms of use.

The safest images to use in teaching materials are images that are:

  • your own
  • licensed for education use
  • licensed with a Creative Commons Licence

or those for which you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder or paid for a licence to use the image.

You can ASK the Library to check for permission to reuse images from books and journals in our collections.

Imperial's licences do not include permission to make images available on the internet.

See the Intellectual Property Office Copyright Notice: digital images, photographs and the internet for detailed guidance.

Easy to reuse images

 Easy to reuse images  

When searching the internet, it can be hard to know which images are safe to reuse and which are not and checking the reuse terms of each image can be time-consuming.

It is better to start your search within image collections that you know are licensed for easy reuse, for example, those that license images with Creative Commons Licences or permit educational reuse of their content. Below are some suggestions but it is a good idea to build up your own list of favourite image sites for use in lecturers and conference presentations.

Remember to acknowledge an image’s creator. See How do I acknowledge images? 

Images of Imperial

Imperial College London Digital Image Library

General images

Creative Commons Search - searches Google, Flickr and Pixabay for CC licensed images

Freeimages - search free images, avoid Getty istock

Flickr - search, then use advanced filters to see only Creative Commons images

MorgueFile - free photos, avoid stock images

Pexels - Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensed images

Unsplash see Unspash Licence

Subject specific image collections

CSIRO Science image (scientific images) - licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

HEAL Collection (medical images) - many Creative Commons licensed images but check individual image metadata

Nasa image galleries (space) - noncommercial educational and informational use – see terms

Public Health Image Library (PHIL) and other US Government image libraries (scientific images) - educational use of most images but check individual image metadata

Servier Medical Art (medical diagrams) - diagrams are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

VADS catalogue (art and design images) - non-commercial education reuse – see terms

Newspaper articles

For online newspaper articles, provide a link or follow the advice for web based materials.

Imperial has a Basic Newspaper Licensing Agency Licence. This covers all UK national newspapers and permits Imperial staff to make a cutting (article, report, photos and artistic works) available to students in print (max 250 copies), and, for some titles, a digital cutting on a VLE.

ASK the Library or the Central Secretariat if you have questions about this licence.

Maps

You may scan a small section of a printed map (A4 or less) and use it in your teaching materials.

For online maps please refer to the licence or terms of use and display any copyright notices requested by the supplier.

Music

You should only play music tracks in a lecture for a teaching purpose, not for entertainment or to create an atmosphere.

In lecture recordings and pre-recorded teaching materials keep your copying fair by shortening the tracks to what is essential to make your teaching point. This will prevent your copies from competing with commercially available copies.

Where students need to listen to whole tracks, in their own time, direct them to a service where they can legally listen to it or download a copy.