Writing a Journal Article for Scholarly Publication

Publishers usually require you to either provide evidence that you have obtained copyright clearance for third party content included in your article or sign an indemnity that removes them from any liability that may arise from publishing your content. Third party content included in your work might range from diagrams, charts or maps to quotations, photographs and works of art.

However, you don't always need the permission of the copyright holder (who in some cases is the publisher if you are using material from another journal article for example). Situations when you don't need permission are:

1. When you are directly critiquing or reviewing the material, as long as your use is fair dealing

2. For short quotations of text, as long as they are no longer than necessary to make your point and are all correctly cited

3. If the work is out of copyright (duration of copyright is usually for 70 years following the death of the author)

4. If the work has already been released under a 'Some rights reserved' licence granting the permission you require, such as Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY).

You will need to obtain permission from the copyright holder to use the content in all other circumstances.