Copyright ownership of teaching materials

In 1998, JISC commissioned a Senior Management Briefing Paper on Copyright (JISC, 1998, p.4), which recommended that “all members of HEIs [Higher Education Institutions], whether staff or students should be educated about the basics of copyright and what is acceptable practice”. A later study, also in relation to copyright in HEIs, stated that “there would seem to be a considerable gap between the legal position and what academic staff believe are their rights” (Weedon, 2000, p.16). Although this is not a recent study, the difference between the actual situation and the perceived situation amongst academics in terms of the ownership of their teaching materials is still unclear. Project RoMEO (2003), which focused on author attitudes associated with research outputs, surveyed participants and investigated who owned the copyright of journal papers that these authors had produced. Under one third (32%) of participants did not know this, which is concerning. It is no surprise then that Cornish (2004, p.12) believes the “ownership of copyright is complex”.