One of the tools available online to aid with obtaining permission to reuse online published material is RightsLink®.
RightsLink® is a service provided by the Copyright Clearance Center and used by publishers as an easy and effective way of allowing 'customers' to order permissions and secure delivery of content wherever it resides, be that a journal, journal article, monograph or other form of online publication.
As a 'customer' RightsLink® allows you to order permissions from a publisher for content, quickly, securely and often without charge.
RightsLink® is used accross many publishers, including but not limited to: Elsevier, Sciencedirect, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Nature Publishing Group, AIP and ACS Science.
If a publisher is using RightsLink® to manage permissions for their online content, a link is usually availble in the online at article level, normally on the abstract or full content page, but occasionally this is also found in the table of contents. The is usually prominantly placed under the title of the work or situated in left/right hand boxes next to the article and will be lablled "Get rights and permissions"*.
Once you have selected this link a seperate RightsLink® window will appear.
*As the placing of the link, the name also varies publisher by publisher, but will be a varient of the example given ("Reuse and permission", "Get rights and content", "Rights and permissions", etc).
Within the RightsLink® window you are presented with a form, in which the form should be completed using the dropdown choices available. After comlpeting the required information, selecting 'Quick Price' will allow you to see if there is a charge** associated with licensing the content requested. For reuse in a thesis/dissertation this reuse will usually carry no charge. Even if reuse of material is free a license should be obtained. If a license is not necessary, this will be stated in RightsLink® or in the case of material licensed under Creative Commons in the article itself.
In order to obtain the license (required as proof that permission has been obtained), you will need to create an account with RightsLink®. THere is no charge associated with creating an account and this can be done by selecting "Create Account" featured in the same window.
**Note: the University does not expect you to have to pay to obtain permissions to third party content, in order to complete your thesis submission to ORA, for any content where permission cannot be obtained or a charge is incurred, dispensation from consultation can be applied for.
Any permissions received with regards to reusing material in your thesis should be forwarded to ORA along with your full text deposit. This includes any licenses obtained from RightsLink® or communication with the original owner (for example email). The license that should be provided to ORA, once obtained from RightsLink®, is the printable license (preferably downloaded and sent as a PDF).
If there are specific terms of reuse associated with the licensed content this will be stipulated in the printable license, this will usually concern the required acknowledgement to the original source of content and publisher.
