Rights and Licensing

RightsLink

We offer the Copyright Clearance Centre’s Rightslink licensing solution for all BMJ Group permissions. The service is quick and easy to use. You can get a quick price and instant permission to reuse BMJ Group content in many different ways.

Here are the instructions:

1. Go to our Journals collection or The BMJ Group site and locate the content you wish to reuse
2. Click on ‘Request Permissions’ on the article webpage to get to the Rightslink Permission webpage
3. Follow the instructions in the pop-up window

For additional information see our Frequently Asked Questions page or contact customer care:

• Tel: (+1) 877 622 5543 (toll free) or (+1) 978 777 9929
• Email: [email protected]
• Live chat

The Copyright Clearance Center’s MarketPlace

If you require broader rights than those available on RightsLink please use CCC’s Marketplace service. You can access the platform here and search for the article’s title or DOI.

For more information about Marketplace, please follow this link or contact the customer care team at [email protected] or call them on (+1) 978 646 2600.

STM permissions guidelines

As a signatory of the STM permissions guidelines, BMJ Group is keen to reduce barriers to researchers and facilitate the process of scientific publishing in journals.

Please note that BMJ Group’s participation in the Guidelines only extends to Journals, in order to ensure a reciprocal arrangement. Signatories reusing BMJ Group content in books and other products will be charged a permission fee. Conversely, BMJ Group will pay permission fees for the reuse of any signatories’ book content in our products. Our RightsLink implementation reflects this.

We must emphasise that these are just guidelines. Any requests should still go through RightsLink or be emailed to the BMJ Group Permissions department.

You can read more about it here

Permission requests

For any reuse rights not available on RightsLink or www.copyright.com (including multiple rights for a campaign) please complete this form and someone from the BMJ Group Permissions Department will be in touch.

Clinical trial requests

If you are seeking permission to use BMJ Group content in a clinical trial please complete this form and someone from the BMJ Group Permissions Department will be in touch.

Author permissions

As the author of a work published by BMJ Group, you retain some rights to reuse the work. Please visit this page to find out more.

Modifications

Please note that our automated permissions do not allow you to alter the material, other than to make stylistic changes. If you wish to adapt material please send a draft of the revised work and a full reference to the original to [email protected].

PLSClear

The Publisher’s Licensing Society portal, PLSClear, offers a UK-based permissions service for BMJ Group content.

Non-journal content

To reuse content from BMJ Learning or BMJ Best Practice, please use CCC’s MarketPlace.
For OnExam and any other BMJ products please send full details of your request to [email protected].

Multimedia

Permission requests to reuse videos, visual abstracts, and podcasts are not covered by RightsLink or any other automated services. Please send full details of your request to [email protected].

You can now acquire permission to use infographics via RightsLink. Simply, go to the infographic’s webpage, click ‘Request Permissions’ and select Infographic as the portion.

EULAR textbooks

To reuse material from any of the EULAR Textbooks please contact [email protected].

Western Journal of Medicine

If you wish to reuse content from the Western Journal of Medicine, or any other discontinued BMJ Group content, please email [email protected].

Our Permissions team will send a link to a RightsLink window for reuse of the content.

Do you hold a licence from any of the following:

• Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA)
• Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), or
• an equivalent Reproduction Rights Organisation (RRO)?

If so, you may not need to contact us to request permission for a wide range of uses. Depending on the licence you hold, these may
include:

• Copying for internal meetings
• Use in presentations (though not for sales or marketing purposes)
• Emailing to colleagues
• Many educational uses.

Please refer to your licence for detailed terms.
For more information please contact CLA, CCC or your local RRO.

Reprints of original articles from The BMJ, Journals and evidence-based journals are available for purchase.

They offer a cost-effective and authoritative way of providing information on advances in medicine and new therapeutic areas.

If you wish to purchase multiple stand-alone copies of a BMJ paper, please contact the following:

World and UK: Nadia Gurney-Randall [email protected]

North America and Latin America: Ray Thibodeau [email protected]

As an author, the rights you have over your article will vary depending on the type of licence you have. The licence sets out everything you are allowed to do without seeking prior permission.

When publishing in a BMJ Journal, authors can choose between three licence types:

1. exclusive licence granted to BMJ Group
2. CC-BY-NC
3. CC-BY

(These Creative Commons open access licences require payment of an article publishing charge).

As an author, what you can do with your article, without seeking permission, depends on the licence you have chosen.

Author self-archiving

If you intend to post your article in an institutional or subject repository, or as a preprint, please review our terms and conditions here:

• Non-open access articles
• CC BY NC articles
• CC BY articles

Author permissions

The author licence allows you to reuse your content in certain ways. If you want to reuse it in one of those ways, you won’t need to seek
permission.

However, other uses may fall outside of the rights granted by the licence and you will need permission.

To check whether you need permission to reuse your content, please select the licence type your article was published under:

• What is permitted under the author licence?

Conference abstracts

A different licence applies when publishing an abstract presented at a conference. In this case, authors grant BMJ Group an exclusive licence to the work while retaining copyright.

The licence may include the right to reuse the abstract for non-commercial purposes or as part of future full-length research articles.

You can find the licence here.

If you have any questions about using your published abstract as part of future articles, please email [email protected] with the details.

If permission is not granted by the author licence, you can acquire it through our online service, RightsLink. Click ‘Request Permissions’
on the article webpage. Further instructions can be found here.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected], with full details of your BMJ Group article and how you want to use it.