Copyright gives protection to the creators/owners of most kinds of original work (in any fixed format – whether written, printed, digital etc.) against their creations being exploited by others.
In the United Kingdom, the main legislation is the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. This has been amended by subsequent Acts and Statutory Instruments. Further information is available from the government website.
Fair Dealing is a legal term used to establish whether a use of a copyright material is lawful or whether it infringes copyright. There is no statutory definition of fair dealing, instead each individual use has to be looked at within the specific circumstances.
The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) states “The question to be asked is: how would a fair-minded and honest person have dealt with the work”.
Always attribute the source of any resource you use–otherwise, you won't be able to rely on copyright exceptions for teaching or research
Provide links to copyrighter resources through NELSON (the University of Northampton discovery service), through the publisher’s website or other official and legal means
Never upload a .pdf of a published article or book chapter to your reading list–use a stable link instead to direct students to the article or book on NELSON.
Never scan a journal article or book chapter yourself–use the University’s Digitisation Service to provide a legal and copyright-cleared scan
Use free and open sources if possible. These include resources or images belonging to the Public Domain, resources that are under a Creative Commons license, or open-source software.