This guide is for informational purposes only. It does not provide legal advice. Always check the relevant section of the licence your institution has signed before you provide access or allow use of a resource. If you need further guidance or clarification, please check with our helpdesk or seek legal advice.
A licence is a formal permission to use something, in this case paid-for online content. It is a document that contains all the terms and conditions of use associated with that content, detailing what can and can’t be done, by whom, for how long, and what happens if there are any problems.
In the typical online subscription model, the institution is paying for access to the content, not ownership of it. Digital content is easy to copy and redistribute, so the access to it and the ways in which it can be used need to be controlled beyond copyright laws.
The Jisc Model Licence includes all the terms and conditions that your institution and your users need to ensure that you get the most out of the online resources you subscribe to. We use our Model Licence as the foundation for every agreement we negotiate on behalf of our members – universities, colleges, research councils and affiliates.
The Jisc Model Licence tells you:
It also includes other terms and conditions that protect you, your institution, your users and the publisher, such as the duration of the agreement, grounds for termination, acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, warranties and indemnities, force majeure and the law under which the agreement is governed.
We have a number of different versions of our Model Licence. Which one we use is determined by the following factors:
The permissions, restrictions and responsibilities are essentially the same for each version.
We use an online ordering service in connection with licences. Acceptance of our licences is not through signature but by clicking on the relevant section in the Subscription Order and Acceptance Form attached to the relevant licence.
It is important to know what rights you have at the end of a Licence. The key things to look out for are:
Our Model Licence spells these things out very clearly, but wording may vary according to what the publisher can offer, so it is always important to check.
If either the institution or the publisher (or Jisc Collections) fails to comply with any of its obligations under the licence this is called a breach. A material breach is a very serious breach which may result in the termination of the Licence. If the breach is not remedied within 30 days, the licence may be terminated. If it is the institution that has committed the breach, the publisher (or Jisc Collections) will remove access to the resource. If it is the publisher that has committed the breach, the institution might be entitled to a refund on its subscription.
Our Model Licence is a starting point for negotiations with publishers. We make every effort to retain all the clauses, but we occasionally accept amendments to get a better deal for our members. This only occurs after consultation with skilled legal counsel contracted by us to ensure the interests of the community are protected.
You should always check the precise wording of the terms and conditions of each licence, and if necessary, seek help from us or advice from your own lawyers before you accept it.
The schedules contain important information about:
Definition of Authorised User: We have changed this key definition to specify that Authorised Users be "registered" with the subscribing UK institution. This aligns our wording with that of the HESA Aggregate Offshore record (HESA AOR) and is intended to address the question of whether overseas users may be included in the licence as Authorised Users or whether they are Additional Authorised Users. See "What about overseas students and Partner Organisations?" for more information.
Post-cancellation access (PCA): It is increasingly important for institutions to know exactly what paid-for content they would be entitled to access if they cancelled their subscription to a particular journal deal. Our new model licence has firmed up the wording around PCA, bringing greater granularity and clarity. See "What happens when a subscription ends?" for more information.
Permitted Uses: We have expanded the range of things that staff and students are allowed to do with the licensed material, to incorporate recent changes to UK copyright law. We have also made it clear that Publishers should not require users to accept any further terms and conditions of use that might clash with those in the Jisc licence (Clause 6.1).
Schedules: The Industry Standards schedule has been expanded and brought up-to-date, and we have introduced a new schedule of Service Levels to give greater detail around areas such as platform downtime and response times. There is also a new schedule of obligations on the Publisher for agreements that include an OA publishing element.
Resources can be used by Authorised Users. These fall into three categories:
For further information about what "registered" means, see What about overseas students and Partner Organisations? (below).
Resources can only be used for educational purposes. This means teaching (either face-to-face or distance learning), private study and research. If a user has a query about what they can do, ask yourself whether it is educational or not. If it is, then it is allowed.
Resources can't be used for any commercial use. This means they can’t be sold, charged for, or used in commercial research. Some courses and research are funded by commercial organisations, and many institutions now charge for courses and other services such as printing. This is not counted as commercial use as long as it is done on a cost basis and a no profit is made.
Resources should never be made available to anyone who is not an Authorised User, and never on any network that is not secure.
Registered students, faculty staff and walk-in users are allowed to:
This means that staff are allowed to include extracts from resources as they put together teaching and learning materials, reading lists, hand-outs, course packs and interactive tutorials.
It also means that students can include extracts in their course work, projects, dissertations and assignments. For example, using a mix of text, images or sound to illustrate an argument in a new way.
Staff and students can take a variety of materials from a range of resources to create work that is much greater than the sum of its parts. They can then use them at presentations, workshops, conferences and seminars.
Members of library, IT or administrative staff are allowed to:
Our Model Licence specifically prohibits the following actions:
Note: When copying and pasting extracts from the resource, any form of acknowledgment associated with the item must be included (e.g. a copyright caption with an image).
All of these restrictions continue to apply to any saved content after the end of the licence agreement.
Many institutions have relationships with other institutions such as universities and colleges both within the UK and overseas. Knowing whether staff and students at these institutions can or can't access the resources you subscribe to can be confusing, especially when access to library resources wasn't the main consideration of those people putting these arrangements in place.
We have developed a Transnational education licensing service and licensing framework to help with this, implemented following a Pilot phase from August 2017 to July 2018.
In 2018, we changed the definition of Authorised User in our licence to specify that students should be "registered" with the subscribing UK institution. This aligns our wording with that of the HESA Aggregate Offshore record (HESA AOR) and is intended to address the question of whether overseas users may be included in the licence as Authorised Users or whether they are Additional Authorised Users. The HESA AOR is completed by staff at HEIs and is a common source of authority across the sector.
| Code 1 | Code 2 | Code 3 | Code 4 | Code 5 |
| Registered at reporting provider - studying overseas for UK HEP award at overseas campus of reporting provider | Registered at reporting provider - studying overseas for UK HEP award other than at an overseas campus of reporting provider | Registered at reporting provider - distance, flexible and distributed learning for UK HEP award where the location of the student is known to be overseas. | Registered at overseas partner organisation - studying overseas for an award of the reporting provider | Any other student studying overseas for an award of the reporting provider |
"Registered" in the HESA AOR Codes 1, 2 and 3 is a term defined by the English, Scottish and Welsh funding councils. Each funding body has agreed to adopt a common definition of "registered" following the HESA Data Futures Project:
"A student registration is a binding agreement between a student and an organisation for the delivery of educational services, within the meaning of 'Stage 3: enrolment stage' in the Competition and Markets Authority's advice for HE providers on consumer protection law."
Jisc Collections has identified that users reported as "registered at reporting provider" in Codes 1, 2 and 3 of the HESA AOR are aligned to the definition of Authorised User in Jisc Collections' licence agreements. We have identified that users reported in Codes 4 and 5 are almost certainly Additional Authorised Users, not included in the licence agreement accepted by the HEI as licensee, because the registration is either at the overseas partner or does not apply at all.
At a local level, institutions may use different terminology to mean their students are registered (e.g. "enrolled"), but for the purposes of consistent licensing across the sector, we have adopted the common HESA AOR terminology of "registered".
If your institution awards honorary fellowships to overseas academics under the CARA programme and they have the same status as your faculty staff, they can be considered Authorised Users under Jisc licences.
Library staff can use resources for inter-library loans.
Our Model Licence makes it clear that the resource can be used for text and datamining, if appropriate.
Parts of the resource can be deposited in perpetuity in a repository operated by your institution, provided that only your Authorised Users (as defined by the licence) are permitted to access it. As with VLEs, some publishers permit only links to the content to be included in repositories. It is always important to check the specific licence for the resource.
Our Model Licence makes it clear that Authorised Users can incorporate parts of a resource in learning materials and objects in VLEs with proper acknowledgement. Some publishers only permit links to the content to be included. It is always important to check the specific licence for the resource.
When you accept a Licence, you agree to:
A breach of the Licence is a serious matter and can be grounds for termination of the Licence. This places the rights of other users in jeopardy.
The Publisher most commonly agree to provide you with:
Our Model Licence also includes:
Our licence ensures that publishers and other suppliers fully comply with GDPR by not collecting personal information about any Authorised User, other than as required for the administration of the licence.
Remote access is allowed in all our model licences. The Jisc Model Licence requires publishers to provide for 24/7 access for unlimited simultaneous users by secure authenticated access such as federated access management, secure proxy access, IP authentication.
There is no difference between what an Authorised User can do on campus and off campus (apart from Walk-In Users, who are not granted remote access). Staff and students of institutions can also access resources while studying or on sabbatical abroad.
To support the transition to open access, Jisc Collections has created a model licence specifically for transitional "read and publish" agreements that brings together the right to access and use a publisher's content with the right to publish in that content, in a single agreement and for a single fee. To ensure transparency and adherence to funder mandates for both Gold and Green routes, we have introduced standardised terms and conditions around the submission and publication of articles, including the licence terms under which they will be published (e.g. CC-BY), and detailed obligations on the publisher for metadata feeds and statistical reporting.
Jisc Collections Read and Publish agreements are published on the ESAC Registry and can be found on our website.
A Walk-In User is not a current student or member of staff of your institution, but a member of the public permitted to use your library. They can have access to the resources you subscribe to via your secure network (including secure wireless networks) when physically within the institutional premises, but they are not allowed remote access.
You can decide if you want to provide access for walk-in users, but please remember that they must comply with the terms and conditions in exactly the same way as all your other users.
Our Model Licence makes frequent reference to "parts of the Licensed Material" throughout the permissions and restrictions. However, there is no absolute definition, and interpretation can vary widely over the exact quantity.
As a rule of thumb, anything that isn’t the "whole" of the Licensed Material (database, book, journal) qualifies as a "part"; however, it is important to remember that for any licence to work there must be trust on both sides, so it is best to use common sense and to avoid the sort of downloading that might be regarded as "systematic".
Our Model Licence makes reference to "reasonable efforts" throughout the sections on responsibilities. However, there is no absolute definition, and common sense should dictate what these are. A publisher should not expect you to enforce or police conditions that are beyond your control.
Our licences are "signed" or accepted automatically when you place an order through our website, but we occasionally hear reports of institutions renewing their Jisc Collections subscriptions directly with the Publisher and forgetting to order through us. If you do this you won’t have accepted (or “signed”) our licence, and it will be unclear which terms and conditions your users will be accessing and using the content under: it could be the publisher’s own terms, which might be more restrictive than the Jisc licence. Please make sure you always order through the Jisc website.