Rights and permissions for authors

As an author you will need to secure the necessary reproduction rights for any third party material you have used in your article with the rights holder prior to submission or, if not possible, at the very latest before acceptance of the manuscript. You will need to acquire both print and online rights. This is essential for Oxford University Press to protect the journal from copyright infringement. Copies of each grant of permission should be provided to the Editorial office of the journal you are submitting your paper to. Oxford University Press provides detailed Copyright and Permissions Guidelines, but the basic information needed is summarised below.

Required rights

When seeking permission to reproduce any kind of third party material in an Oxford Journal, please request the following:

• Non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal
• Preferably for use in any form or medium. If not possible to secure such broad-ranging rights, we do need the right to make the content available online (see below)
• The right to use the material for the life of the work (no time-restrictions such as one year etc. on the licence granted)
• World-wide English-language rights. If rights for all languages can be secured, this is preferable
• The right to use images with a resolution of 300 dpi
   

Key points to consider

• Oxford University Press provides a template Permission Request Letter (copy available from the journal editorial office). We recommend using this wherever possible in your correspondence, as it explains what rights are needed. Permission granted by email is acceptable, as long as it incorporates the rights we need.
• You will need to ask for non-exclusive rights, for print and electronic reproduction (including online). Rights should also be worldwide English language rights, or ideally worldwide rights for all languages.
• When requesting online permission, please ensure that you obtain permission to reuse the image for the life of the work. Because of the complexities of obtaining, maintaining and renewing online permissions, it is not practical for us to accept time limited licences. If it is not possible to secure permission for the life of the work, we recommend that you clear print rights only and we will blank out the image in our online version, although this is not ideal either for the article or for the journal as a whole. Where this situation occurs, it is essential that you notify the journal editorial office and production office as early as possible.
• Make sure you supply details of the original source of the images you have used so they can be mentioned in the captions.
• Keep all correspondence you have with the rights holder, including any emails.
• If you are granted permission by the rights holder but are charged a fee, then do go back to the museum or gallery in question and negotiate. Most rights holders will do this.
• If you are not sure who to contact for permission, it is usually best to speak first to the publisher of the work in which the image you are using appeared, as they may still control the rights.
• Please alert the journal’s Editorial Office if you cannot get a response from the rights holder after you have tried at least a few times. We would advise you to try and source an alternative image if permission cannot be obtained.
• If you are still unable to contact the rights holder, then consider searching the Internet to find the information you need or contact any of the organizations, mentioned in the guidelines, who may be able to help. If these are not helpful, then contact the Editorial Office for the relevant journal.

Answers to frequently asked permissions questions

What kind of publication is it?

A scholarly journal published by Oxford Journals—a not-for-profit organization.

What is the print run? What are the selling/subscription prices?

The Journal Editorial office will be able to help you with this information.

Why do we request online permission for the life of the work?

Unlike print images where permission is required once, online images sometimes contain time-limited clauses. In order to keep both print and online versions as similar as possible, and avoid the need to constantly reapply for permission, it is our policy to only display online images which are available for the life of the work.

What are our choices if online permission for the life of the work is not granted?

Because of the complexity and cost of applying and reapplying for electronic permissions, combined with the need to keep track of images with varying degrees of time limitation, we have decided to only use images electronically if we are able to secure rights for the life of the work. If it is not possible to secure permission for the life of the work, we recommend that you clear print rights only, and we will blank out the image in the online journal, although this is not ideal either for the article or for the journal as a whole. Where this occurs, it is essential that you notify the journal editorial office and production office as early as possible.

Will I always need to request permission to re-use third party content?

In some cases, you will be able to reuse content in your article without permission. For example, the content may be in public domain, it may have been distributed under an Open Access licence, the use might fall into a copyright exception such as fair use or fair dealing, the copyright term may have ended, the content may not be protected by copyright all, etc. (For further information on third party content that would not require permission, please see our Copyright and Permissions Guidelines.) However, otherwise you will need to obtain permission from the rights holder in order to reuse that third party content in an Oxford University Press Journals article.

If you have any additional questions about copyright or the process of obtaining permission please see our Copyright and Permissions Guidelines.