Information for Writers and Contributors

Copyright Licence Agreement

• This page explains our licence agreement for writers and contributors to BCRA's publications. The text of this section is available as a printable PDF.
• For more general information on copyright, including information for readers and for editors of BCRA publications, please see Copyright of BCRA Publications.
• Further information for authors, including writing guidelines is at Information for Authors.

Thank you for contributing to (or offering to contribute to) one of our publications. Clearly, you would not be sending us your material if you were not giving us permission to publish it, but we need to make sure that the extent of the permission is agreed. Basically, we do not ask you to transfer copyright to us, but we ask that you give us a licence to use your contribution in print and online in various ways. The details are explained below.

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Ownership of Copyright

• The material you send us should be your own original work and must not infringe any existing copyright.
• If you are not the author or photographer, it is your responsibility to obtain recorded permission from the person who did write the article, take the photo, draw the map, etc. As a courtesy to the person(s) concerned, you should acknowledge them in your contribution. Please contact us if you need more information.

Transfer of Copyright

• We do not ask you to transfer copyright to us, so you will still own copyright in the material you send to us and you will be free to use it elsewhere (although an acknowledgement that we have used it would be appreciated).

What we will do with your material

Obviously, we are going to use your work in our printed publication. However, we would also like to be able to use it in the online versions of our publications and, for that, we need your explicit permission. We therefore ask you to agree that...

BCRA shall retain, in perpetuity, a non-exclusive licence to reproduce the work containing your material in any medium. This licence shall extend to the separate publication of individual articles in the work, and to BCRA’s licensing of the content of the work to database and library services, but not to any other use of your material. If you need any further information as to what this means, please see bcra.org.uk/copyright or get in touch with us.

How to convey your agreement to us

The simplest way for you to do this is to paste the following text into an email and to send it copyright3@.... We do not need a "signature" from you, so an email will be fine. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Further Details for Contributors

Under English law, you own the copyright in your manuscript (including photos, diagrams, maps etc.) and this can only be assigned to another owner by written agreement. BCRA does not seek such agreement from you. However, by submitting your manuscript for publication it is obvious that you must be implicitly agreeing to allow BCRA a licence to reproduce your work and, in the absence of any further agreement with you, that licence will be restricted to a British serial right or a British book right as appropriate.

BCRA wishes to archive its publications in a way that makes them more accessible to future generations. To allow us the options of shipping our publications on CD-ROM and of making them available on the Internet, we would like to license from you a non-exclusive right to British electronic publication and to Internet publication. The form of the licence, as it will appear in our publications, will be ...

Copyright of text, photos, and graphics that appear in this work will not be assigned to the Association but the Association shall retain, in perpetuity, a non-exclusive licence to reproduce this work in any medium. This licence shall extend to the separate publication of individual articles in the work and to BCRA's licensing of the content of the work to database and library services but not to any other use of your material.

We do not need a 'signed' statement from you, but we do need a tangible confirmation of your agreement (e.g. an email). If you have previously agreed to these licensing conditions, submission of further material may be taken by us as confirmation that you are still in agreement unless you notify us in writing of any restrictions that you wish to be applied.

These arrangements were designed to cope with the majority of written contributions to our publications. However, we are aware that in some circumstances - particularly concerning the use of photographs - some contributors may wish to place restrictions on the scope or duration of the licence, or on the nature of the publication medium (e.g. low resolution copy-protected PDF). These should be discussed with the editor on a case-by-case basis. Another special circumstance concerns the use of cave surveys. A caving club might generate significant income from the sale of a survey so, if you submit a survey for publication, you might wish to restrict its electronic publication to a low-resolution copy or for a specific time period.

In these respects all authors should note that our conditions of 'in perpetuity' and 'in any medium' are intended to avoid the need for us to contact authors more than once over the ensuing years and they do not represent a specific demand by us for a broadly-based licence. BCRA is willing to discuss the matter with those few authors who may require more explicit terms. For some publications, BCRA may require additional conditions that cover the licensing or syndication right of the content of the work to database and library services.

Please also note that...

• Submissions (including letters to the editor) are assumed to be for publication unless stated otherwise.
• It is the author's responsibility to obtain copyright clearance for any third-party material submitted. You should show a copy of our licensing agreement to your source and obtain their written agreement.

In the past, BCRA has issued guidelines to authors that have stated that BCRA will own the copyright of any material submitted. Such a statement is not correct, in law, because copyright can only be assigned by a written agreement. However, by submitting your article, and having it subjected to the normal 'creative' editorial processes, BCRA does create a copyright interest in your published text, but only to the extent that the text has been edited. It is normal practice for the author to seek permission from the publisher to reproduce this edited text (sometimes referred to as the 'author manuscript' or 'final author version' or 'post-print' version) and BCRA will almost certainly agree to this. However, just to stress the point made earlier, BCRA cannot give permission for third-party reproduction because the author's copyright has not been assigned to BCRA in writing.

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.
• 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.