Fact Sheet
Copyright Clearance Reporting Form and Statements of Compliance
Definitions for terms that appear on the Copyright Clearance Reporting Form
A Transactional License is express permission for a specific use that has been secured
from the copyright holder. The license may need to be purchased (i.e., there may be a
cost for acquiring the license). Please keep a record of your permissions. Please be
aware that without permission, you will not be able to post or distribute the material.
Fair Dealing is an exception to the Copyright Act, which permits the use of less than
substantial passages and quotations from material protected by copyright for the
purpose of private study, research, criticism, review and/or newspaper reporting. For
more detailed information on Fair Dealing, please see the U of S’s Fair Dealing
Guidelines.
Public Domain works are those for which the term of copyright has expired. Generally,
works enter the public domain 50 years following the end of the year in which the
work’s creator died.
Open Access is a movement in the distribution of scholarly material that requires
works to be shared freely. “Free” means free of most copyright and licensing
restrictions, yet are fully compatible with peer-review, copyright, profit and
preservation
Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools offer a balance inside the traditional
“all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. It gives creators a simple,
standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work and provides
users with clear, understandable instructions on how materials can be used.
FAQs
Q: Why am I being asked to do to complete these forms?
The U of S is working on strengthening its compliance with copyright licenses and
legislation, particularly as we continue to move away from printed coursepacks and
more distribution of course materials is happening electronically. These forms are
envisioned as an interim step as we investigate software systems that would manage
and track the information being collected.
www.usask.ca/copyright
Q: What do I need to include on these forms?
On the Copyright Clearance Reporting Form, please include the requested information
for all material that is being distributed to students that requires permission or a
transactional license (both in hard copy and electronically). Please note that the
Bookstore will still be able to seek licenses for your print material and will sell
coursepacks for your course at the bookstore.
Q: Why do I need a license to post material?
Posting a copy of a document (like a pdf of a journal article) on a course website is
considered distribution. If this distribution exceeds the Fair Dealing Guidelines
permission is required from the copyright holder. Permission is usually granted by the
copyright holder by way of a paid license, which ensures the copyright holder is being
compensated for the use of their material.
Q: How do I find out if the library already has a license for the material I want to
use?
The U of S library holds thousands of licenses for e-journals and has recently put a
usage-rights database into place to make it easy to quickly determine the permitted use
for a particular journal article. Simply search the title of the journal article you wish to
share into the “u-search” field on the Library’s homepage, find the article you seek and
click on it. You will then see the usage-rights information directly under the journal
database title.
Q: I have filled out the Copyright Clearance Reporting Form. Now what do I do?
Once you have completed the Copyright Clearance Reporting Form, please keep it in
your files as a record of copyrighted materials used in this course. The form may be
requested by the Copyright Coordinator.
Q: I have more questions about these forms. Who can I contact?
Please contact the Copyright Coordinator at 966-8817 or at
copyright.coordinator@usask.ca