Dear colleagues,
I am quite a while in this business and I as well all of my colleagues routinely use survey scales published (and printed) in journal papers.
In the course of planning a new multi-member project, one of the partners claimed that even then there are copyright issues and one needs some kind of approval....
I am puzzled and would like to hear some thoughts (or better profound knowledge :)
Best,
Holger
Holger Steinmetz - Thank you for your question. That is true. You need to ask the original creator of the questionnaire for their permission to use their survey, even if it is available free on the internet. You also need to state this on the questionnaire itself that you will use, and in the manuscript, you plan to publish. Some surveys are not freely available, and you have to pay fees to the university that owns them. So take this carefully, because we can smoothly go into troubles if you publish without considering the required permissions.
Dear Samy,
thanks for the comment. To repeat, I talked about the papers itself in which the items / question wordings are contained. In my experience, of course, you cite the paper as a source of the scale. This is usual practice.
If you have, in addition or prior to using the scale, have to ask for permission, is there any legal basis for that in addition to "you have to ask for permisson". Why? I am not very familiar with legal issues, hence I would be very interested what htis basis could be? International copyright law?
And besides that, as the rights are usually transferred from the authors to the publisher: Wouldn't this mean that you have to ask the publisher?
Very confusing.
Best,
Holger
Hello Holger,
It depends on the publication. As you say, many journals require authors to convey copyright ownership to them (the journal publisher) as a condition for publication. Some, happily, do not. But, these journals are in the minority in my fields of interest. In my experience, if the request indicates that the use of the measure is for research purposes, permission is almost always given.
Here's one source of guidance as to whether permission is required, and it has to do with the length of the excerpt: https://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/roig_st_johns/Copyright%20Infringement.html
At many universities, you'll find that the library staff are uniquely aware of copyright and permission restrictions; these might be very useful folks with whom your team might consult.
It's a good question, and it would be a shame if the universal solution was along the lines of: sit pugnare ex advocatorum.
Cheers,
Interesting question, wondered about that myself. Just as an (unqualified) side-note, often you do not transfer the ownership of the content, only the distribution of the content (especially the typeset afterward). This is why you are every so often allowed to distribute the pre-final version freely (as long as correctly cited). I would argue that transferring this type of ownership is not the same as transferring the right of (commercial) exploitation of the scale. I guess it depends on the source. For example, I was a co-author on a scale published in Diagnostica, which is why we transferred the rights on the paper to Hogrefe. However, the developed scale is not sold by Hogrefe as a test (which they do with [I guess] their own scale). As an author, I always hope that people will use and reuse the scales to validate and develop the measurement instrument.
Holger Steinmetz - Thank you for your response.
Not usually owned by the publisher. For example, The measurement of experienced burnout questionnaire by CHRISTINA MASLACH, published as below
https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/faculty_staff_docs/TheMeasurementofExperiencedBurnout.pdf
However, if you are going to use the questionnaire, you have to pay costs for the questionnaire from an agent I think linked with the university- see link below
https://www.mindgarden.com/315-mbi-human-services-survey-medical-personnel
There are other similar examples. Usually the IP of the questionnaire is registered and shared between the authors and the university.
Samy Azer. You have raised some interesting points about the Maslach Burnout Inventory. I notice that it appears in many publications and I wonder how many researchers pay for using it.
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