Copyright Information for Staff

The recently revised UHI Copyright policy applies to all students, staff, research staff, and guest lecturers.  It covers the creation of content in any format for learning, teaching, assessment, research, open education, and administrative purposes. The policy encourages ethical use of materials while respecting the rights of content creators.

It is to ensure compliance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the terms of the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and Educational Recording Agency (ERA) licences.  Non-compliance can lead to legal action, fines, and reputational damage for UHI and the staff involved. Staff are required to adhere to the policy, review materials, and undertake this training course.

Implementation of the policy is the responsibility of every member of staff. In most cases staff will be contacted directly via the audit process if there is a problem with their materials. Serious infringements and failure to respond to the audit will be reported to the relevant university manager who will evaluate the issue and raise it with the appropriate Academic Partner and will escalate it to the Deans if necessary.

To ensure that UHI meets its obligations, the following review and audit processes are in place:

1. Self-evaluation processes, and quality dialogues across partners and university wide.
2. Quality enhancement processes.
3. CLA audit – a sample of HE teaching content is audited annually.
4. New programme audit conducted during the new curriculum process – existing modules that will be part of a new development.
5. VLE review process – annual random selection of taught content.

Items may be removed due to:

• Complaints.
• Copyright or licence infringement.
• Inappropriate content.
• Abuse of copyright or licence, for example, more than the permitted amount scanned.
• Failure to reference.

Any item that is the subject of a complaint may be taken down immediately and staff notified. To ensure teaching continuity, copyright compliant alternatives will be recommended .

If an item that infringes copyright is discovered during an internal audit by the UHI copyright officer, and does not require immediate removal, staff will be given eight working weeks to address the issue. If the item is discovered during a holiday period, staff will be given eight working weeks from their return to address the issue.