Easy Access Agreement
The Easy Access Agreement is an arrangement between the Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) and academic publishers, represented by Stichting UvO (Publishing Organisation for Education Licences), about the inclusion of certain types of sources in educational material used within the university.
The agreement, also referred to as the "course pack agreement" (readerregeling), means that universities no longer need to separately report or pay for short and medium length source inclusions before publication. The universities pay a fixed fee to Stichting UvO for this.
In order to evaluate this arrangement, it has been agreed that Stichting UvO can carry out random checks into the reuse of copyright-protected works in educational material. It is determined in advance which course units and subjects will be checked.
Utrecht University must reduce the number of source inclusions. Therefore, preferably use a hyperlink to the publication.
To help teachers determine how they can best refer to sources, the Copyright Information Office has created a flowchart for the reuse of sources in teaching material.
What are short and medium length source inclusions?
Short inclusion:
inclusion on paper or in digital form from copyrighted works of
- from a book: a maximum of 10,000 words, not exceeding one third of the original work (based on number of pages)
- from a journal: a maximum of 8,000 words
- from a literary text: a maximum of 100 lines of poetry or 2,500 words of prose, not exceeding one tenth of the entire original work
- sheet music (from a song text): a maximum of one verse and refrain
- sheet music (from a musical notation): a maximum of five staves from one sheet
- pictures, charts, tables, diagrams and similar works: no more than 25 from the same original edition, and some works by the same author.
Medium length inclusion:
inclusion on paper or in digital form from copyrighted work that is not a short inclusion, of a maximum of 40 pages and a maximum of 20% of the content of the book or journal.
Explanation of the conditions
If you want to place a copy from a journal or book on Blackboard as a PDF-file, you are bound by the rules of the Easy Access Agreement. It makes no difference whether the university library has the journal in its collection or not. If it concerns a digital journal that the university library has a subscription to or an e-book, you can link to it in your teaching material. Remember to use a proxy link.
Questions
Do you have any questions about the Easy Access Agreement? Please contact us.