What you post on Brightspace adds to the costs for your institute/faculty. The Teaching Exception in the Dutch Copyright Act allows teachers to make copyrighted material available to their students without the permission of the author or other copyright holder. However, fair compensation must be paid for this use. To this end, UNL (Association of Dutch Universities) has entered into an agreement with Foundation UvO, the representative of the joint scientific publishers. This agreement is called the Easy Access Agreement or Reader Agreement. Parties have agreed that each university pays its share to Foundation UvO.

As a teacher, you are involved in this process as follows. The amount that Leiden pays to Foundation UvO is divided proportionally between the faculties. The more copyrighted material a faculty places on Brightspace, the higher the amount that is charged to that faculty. Each faculty decides for itself whether to pay these costs from its central budget, or to charge these costs proportionally to its institutes.

As a teacher, can you share third-party copyrighted material with students via other platforms than Brightspace, for example via Kaltura, MS Teams, Google Docs or via e-mail? No, that is not allowed. The Easy Access Agreement only applies to sharing this material on Brightspace. Any other dissemination of copyrighted material to students constitutes a copyright infringement, for which you yourself are responsible and liable.

Foundation UvO distinguishes between short extracts, medium extracts and long extracts. Short and medium extracts are included in the Easy Access Agreement, long extracts are not.

• A short extract is 8,000 words for an article and 10,000 words for part of a book. Translated into pages we use a limit of 25 pages for a short extract.
• A medium extract is more than 8,000 words for an article. For a book of 200 pages or more, the limit for a medium extract is 40 pages. The limit of 40 pages is new; this used to be 50 pages.
• For a book of less than 200 pages, this limit is 20% of the total number of pages. The limit of 20% is new; this used to be 25%.
• Please note: ‘stacking’ is not permitted: the limit of 40 pages / 20% applies for the duration of the entire course. It is therefore not permitted to post a chapter for the first lecture and then post a chapter from the same book for each subsequent lecture if this exceeds the upper limit.

Why is there a difference between a short and a medium extract? The short extract has a cheaper price per page than the medium extract. YOu can find all page prices on the website of Foundation UvO (only in Dutch).

As a teacher, you are not expected to count the words of your extracts. However, it is important that you keep an eye on the page limit (40 pages or 20% total number of pages) of all the extracts you place on Brightspace. Do you want to place more than 40 pages of a book on Brightspace? Then you have to ask permission from Stichting UvO in advance through a portal. Login is possible through a registration number that can be obtained from the UFB department.

You fill in the requested data via the portal (data of the publication, number of pages and number of students per course ID). You will then receive a separate invoice from the UvO Foundation for this acquisition according to the rates applied. 

Please bear in mind that the costs for a long extract may be high and that you may need prior permission from your institute or faculty. You may therefore wish to consider the following alternatives.

Instead of placing articles and book chapters on Brightspace, you can link to the material. What exactly can you link to? Is the material digitally available in the UBL Catalogue or is it available on a publication platform? Then you can link to it. You can find help in creating a stable link on our webpage Linking to library resources.  

Can the material be found on the Internet? Then you can place the link to it in Brightspace. Tip for easier Internet searching: place the title of the article or book chapter between double inverted commas in the Google search bar, like this: "title article". However, you are not allowed to link to illegal websites, such as PirateBay. Is material published in open access? These publications can also be found on the Internet and you can link to them.

Are publications that your students need to study not digitally available in the Catalogue but they are available as paper books or journals in one of Leiden's libraries? Then you can ask your subject librarian to put together a course reserve.

The publications concerned will be placed there and will not be lent out during the course. Students can study the publications in the library or choose to make a (digital) copy of the material for personal use. A paper copy should then be limited to part of the work. From a magazine: one article only. From a book: a small section. If the book is no longer for sale and out of print, the entire book may be copied (Article 16b Dutch Copyright Act). Making a digital copy is not subject to any restrictions: students paid the copyright fee when they bought the device (Article 16c Dutch Copyright Act). You can read more on our dedicated webpage on Course reserves.  

All publications which are digitally available in the UBL Catalogue can be used to compile a reading list. Please contact your subject librarian if you would like to do this.

To request a digital lecture shelf, you can visit the dedicated webpage on Course reserves.  

The above-mentioned Easy Access Agreement also applies when a teacher compiles a reader via ReaderOnline. This Reader may only consist of short and medium extracts.

ReaderOnline allows students to view the reader digitally in their own ReaderOnline environment and to pick up a paper copy at various locations. On the Staff Members Portal you can find information on how to apply for ReaderOnline.

Teachers often use a presentation in PowerPoint, Prezi or other presentation tool. They show the presentation during their lecture and post it later as a document on Brightspace. The copyright on the presentation rests with the university.

However, the presentation may also include material (images, photos, diagrams, schedules, charts, memes etc.) from third parties and the copyright on that material rests with these third parties. In such cases the Citation Exception of Article 15a of the Dutch Copyright Act may apply.

The Citation Exception implies that a (small) part of the copyrighted work of another (the maker) may be used in one's own work. Permission of the maker is not required. Nor does the maker have to be paid for this use. The quote must be functional and may not serve as decoration. The quote must also be proportional and subordinate to the teacher’s argument and plea. As far as reasonably possible, the source, including the name of the maker, must be clearly stated.

How do we convert these legal requirements into a teacher’s presentation?

• For each image, state the source (book title, magazine name + issue) and the name of the maker (author).
• Is the image taken from the internet? State the source and the name of the maker/author (if known), and provide the URL link.
• Do you use an image and do not mention the source? Then the Citation Exception does not apply and unfortunately this use has to be paid for.

There are websites that make images freely available for reuse under a licence such as a Creative Commons license. These images may be used without restriction. However, please do credit the source so that it is clear that this use is permitted.

• How do I place a document in the LOR? 
• Manuals;
• Contact information for each faculty.