Copyright of BCRA Publications
- This web page gives information about BCRA publications.
- Writers and contributors seeking information on how to grant BCRA a licence to use
your material, please see our Information for Writers and
Contributors.
- For information on the copyright of cave surveys, please scroll down to
Cave Surveys.
Click/Tap a link or scroll on down.
Creative Commons Information
Online material shall, where indicated by an 'open padlock' icon
or the CC icon
, be subject to a
Creative Commons CC-BY-NC licence (meaning that attribution is required and only
non-commercial use is licensed). The CC licence means that the material complies with the Open
Access policy of Research Councils UK
Requests to Reproduce BCRA Material
All items published by BCRA are copyright BCRA. Permission should be sought for storage
or reproduction, with the following general exceptions...
- Online publications may be downloaded onto a hard disk or printed for your personal
use - but see full details under Information for Readers, below.
- Online items that are indicated as "Open Access" (see Creative Commons Information
above) may be distributed under the terms of that licence.
- Academic organisations representing the author of a journal article published by BCRA,
who wish to store a copy in an open-access institutional repository are hereby licensed by
BCRA to do so, and the terms are those of a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC licence. (For
clarity, please note that this means that you do not need to seek explicit permission from BCRA,
and that this licence granted by us extends to all articles published by BCRA and authored by
academics at your institution). Added 23-Mar-2023: Additionally, please note that this
permission applies to the Published Version, as well as the Accepted Author Manuscript.
Requests for storage or reproduction that do not fall into one of the above categories
require explicit permission from BCRA. Please send us an email containing the necessary
information, as outlined below. Note: please send this as email text, and
not as an attached document. Please email the secretary (see
Contacting Us) with...
- Your name and email address
- The name of your intended publication
- Your publisher's name and URL
- A list of the material to be reproduced. If this is from one of our periodicals (C&KS, Speleology, CREG
Journal) you can quote the bibliograph given in the contents listings.
Permission will usually be granted in the form of a non-exclusive licence, in perpetuity,
to reproduce the requested material in any medium, provided that acknowledgement is given to BCRA
along the following lines... 1) Figures, photos and similar material may be credited in a
caption as, for example, "[BCRA]" or "[permission: BCRA]". 2) A full credit should be given
at a suitable location in the publication, for example: "... is reproduced by permission of the
British Cave Research Association, http://bcra.org.uk". 3) You may, if you wish, give the
source material a Digital Object Identifier which we will give you.
Please note that permission is given by BCRA only to the extent that it owns any
intellectual property right in the material. Additional rights may owned by the author. BCRA will
contact the author on your behalf and, if there are any unforeseen difficulties, we will contact
you subsequently.
Material that is more than 25 years old
BCRA's copyright in the typographical layout expires 25 years after publication. The
author's own copyright lasts until 70 years after his death. This means that for material more
than 25 years old, you do not need to contact BCRA for permission to reproduce, but you should
still contact the author (or his estate). Clearly this could be difficult in some cases, but we
will do our best to help. However, please note that BCRA cannot give you explicit
permission to reproduce anything more than 25 years old because we no longer hold any copyright in
such items.
Information for Readers
Under English law, publications are copyrighted automatically and there is no need to
declare copyright. However, most BCRA publications will include a copyright statement.
Historically, this statement might simply say, copyright BCRA but the current form of the
notice in our periodicals will usually be along the lines of the following text...
BCRA owns the copyright in the typographical layout of this
publication. Additional copyright in the text, photographs and drawings may reside with the
authors. Subject to statutory exception, no material may be reproduced by any method without
permission of the copyright owners. The authors' opinions are not necessarily endorsed by the
editor, nor the BCRA.
The form of the notice that accompanies our online content is...
BCRA owns the copyright in the typographical layout of its
publications and additional copyright in the text, photographs, graphics and computer code resides
with the authors. The copyright owners assert their Moral Rights to the maximum extent possible
under the Design, Copyright and Patents Act 1988 and any applicable subsequent Acts. Subject to
statutory exception and to the extent permitted in this notice no material may be reproduced by
any method without permission of the copyright owners. Online publications may be downloaded onto
a hard disk or printed for your personal use provided that you include all copyright statements
and that you make no alterations to them and that you do not use any of the pages in any other
work or publication in whatever medium stored.
The salient point, for users of BCRA's publications, is that the authors are not required
to assign their copyright to BCRA. This means that BCRA is not the sole owner of the copyright. If
you wish to reproduce articles from BCRA publications you must obtain permission from BCRA
and from the authors. BCRA has never obtained a legal form of copyright assignment
from its authors so any statement on copyright, even the broadly-worded copyright BCRA must
be taken in the above context.
Information for Writers and Contributors
Information for Writers and Contributors:
This section of this document has now been moved to a separate web page, see
Information for Writers and Contributors
Information for BCRA Editors
BCRA Council has agreed that specified copyright and licensing statements should appear
in the masthead of all BCRA publications in a form that suitably conveys the information. Editors
may wish to extend the statements to include additional guidelines and clarifications. See Form of words for BCRA's publications.
Electronic publication: BCRA Council requests that you make your present and
future authors (and past authors too, where applicable) aware of these notes and that you ask them
to acknowledge agreement (e.g. by email). Please note that it is insufficient to
assume an agreement (e.g. statements such as "if you do not reply we will assume you agree
to our conditions", or "if you submit your article we will assume you agree to our conditions" are
not valid under English law.)
Orphaned works: On a related point concerning copyright, it would be most wise if
you arranged for all photos and graphics to be credited to the author to avoid the situation of
'orphaned works'. See editorialphoto.com/outreachep/orphanworks.asp
for further information.
Joint publication: BCRA has, on occasion, stated that it is the joint publisher or
joint copyright owner of a work. Such a situation requires a legally drawn-up contract to assign
ownership of the rights and so Council asks that no copyright statement of this sort is published
without referring the matter to them.
Cave Surveys
A discussion on Surveys and Copyright by Andrew Atkinson can be found in
Descent 274 (June/July 2020). An earlier article,
which might be out-of-date now, appeared in
Compass Points 11 (March
1996). If that link does not work, please go to Cave
Surveying Group, follow the link to the online archive and read the article in
Compass Points 11.
Further Reading
If you write or take photos professionally - i.e. not for BCRA which does not pay usually
for material - then you might find these links interesting...
For information about legal deposit see
A good explanation of copyright law is given in
You may also be interested in CopyLeft, and in the
Uncyclopedia's explanation of
copyright, including copywrong, copyleft, copywrite, copyup, copydown, copyßoon,
copyinverse, copyforward, copybackward, copylater, copyrecently, and copynever.
Document Revisions
- 26-Apr-2006. This document was written by David Gibson. The date in the page
footer represents a 'last edited' date (which may include cosmetic edits) but any substantial
changes to the text will be documented in the following text.
- 03-June-2015. Added "Requests to Reproduce BCRA Material"
- 06-Feb-2017. Added section on open-access institutional repositories.
- 30-Oct-2020. Reformatted. Original name anchors removed, so some links to this
page might no longer work as intended. Information for Writers and Contributors moved to separate
web page.
