Following lobbying from the community, the CLA has agreed to temporarily relax key terms of its Higher Education Licence to give institutions increased access to learning resources during this difficult period.

The changes take effect immediately and are as follows:

1)  They will temporarily remove the licence requirement that an institution must own an original (Clause 3.2). This will apply to all works covered by the licence (books, journals and magazines) and only where no digital edition is available through commercial channels.

This will enable PDF extracts currently held in the Digital Content Store (DCS) to be used by other institutions that do not own or cannot acquire an original. This will also enable academic staff to scan extracts from their own personal copies of works.

2)  For works published by participating publishers (see list at end of this email), we will amend the extent limit for printed books to 30% or three chapters of the book (whichever is the greater) where:

1. no digital edition is available through commercial channels
2. the institution or a member of its academic staff owns an original

Full details and a list of participating publishers will be available on the CLA website and will be updated frequently.

Use of both amendments will be available only through the DCS or (subject to agreement with Talis) through TADC, workflow tools which combined are used by more than 145 HEIs. They are happy to add DCS users on a temporary basis if required.

Please note the following limitations:

• The amendments do not cover anthologies, plays or poetry
• The permission is temporary, and will terminate as soon as normality resumes or at least by 30 June 2020