VII. PERMISSIONS, COPYRIGHT, AND OTHER ISSUES

If you quote at length from other sources, you may need to secure reprint permission from the copyright holder. Follow the "Fair Use" guidelines outlined in the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (pp. 135-138) for details on when to seek permission from copyright holders.

Unless otherwise agreed, it is the author's responsibility to obtain reprint permission to use any copyrighted material in your book, including any material published electronically.

In contrast to the guidelines on Fair Use provided by The Chicago Manual of Style, Greenwood requires authors to obtain written reprint permission from the original source or publisher when using figures or tables from other sources. When compiling an original table or figure using previously published data, it is not necessary to obtain permission, but you must indicate the source of the data in a footnote to the figure or table.

To Request or Not to Request

Here are some general guidelines for deciding when to request permissions.

Public Domain

Reprint permission is not needed for works in the public domain, including

1. U.S. federal government documents (government documents other than U.S. should be checked).
2. Any works published prior to December 31, 1922, which are in the public domain; but works published after, which were properly renewed, will be protected until at least 2019.

However, you must still cite the source of public domain information; you may not claim it as your own.

Fair Use: How Much Can You Reprint without Permission?

You need permission in writing for quotations in excess of "fair use" for works protected under copyright. There are no exact limits for fair use (but see Greenwood policy below on song lyrics and poetry). There are, however, ways to help you determine fair use, including, for example, the size of the quotation in relation to the size of the work quoted from and the size of your work, and the effect of your use of the copyrighted work on its potential market. Here is what The Chicago Manual of Style says:

Use of any literary work in its entirety—a poem, an essay, a chapter of a book—is hardly ever acceptable. Use of less than the whole will be judged by whether the second author appears to be taking a free ride on the first author's labor. As a general rule, one should never quote more than a few contiguous paragraphs of prose...at a time or let the quotations, even if scattered, begin to overshadow the quoter's own material. Quotations or graphic reproductions should not be so long that they substitute for, or diminish the value of, the copyright owner's own publication. Proportion is more important than the absolute length of a quotation: quoting five hundred words from an essay of five thousand is likely to be riskier than quoting that amount from a work of fifty thousand. But an even smaller percentage can be an infringement if it constitutes the heart of the work being quoted. (Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2003, sec. 4.77, pp.135-136).

Poetry, Song Lyrics, Letters, Drama, and Interviews

Because song lyrics, poetry, letters, and drama are all rigidly protected, Greenwood asks that you supply written permission in order to quote more than even one line from these types of texts. We also require permission for interviews of more than fifty words.

Copyright Law

U.S. copyright law protects a work registered after January 1, 1978, for the lifetime of the author(s) plus fifty years. Similar laws exist in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. "Author" includes corporations, journals, associations, etc. Under the copyright law, a work registered before January 1, 1978, is still protected by copyright if it was renewed at the proper time to continue protection. The copyright law protects such works for a maximum of seventy-five years. Full and up-to-date information about copyright can be obtained by checking the Web site of the United States Copyright Office in Washington, DC: www.copyright.gov

Courtesy Permissions

If you are planning to use your own previously published material to an extent that exceeds fair use, you must obtain permission from the original publisher. Although the original publication may be copyrighted in your name, the original publisher is still likely to control publication rights. You should refer to your publication contract applicable to your own previously published work.

If you are the editor of a book that includes original work from other authors, your contributors must sign release forms giving Greenwood permission to publish their contributions. See "Working with Contributors."

All permissions must be obtained before the manuscript can be accepted and scheduled for publication.

Writing About Living People

If your work contains information on living people, please be careful about wording. And be aware that you must also take care with those who are deceased who may have estates that zealously protect the individual. Your book will be looked to for authoritative takes on subjects, not for speculative theorizing. Do not speculate on how a person must have felt. If you are printing a statement about a party that could offend, you should have a reputable source to back it up. If accusations have been made that, for example, a major company uses underage labor overseas, you must use wording such as "allegations have been made," not "It is well-known that ABC Corporation operates sweatshops with underage labor."

Although anyone who is famous inevitably pays the price of privacy loss, it is inappropriate to give intimate details about individuals from private life who may have relationships with celebrities.

Minimum Permission Grant Standards

Please be sure that you begin the permission-seeking process early in your manuscript preparation, or as you go along. If you wait until your manuscript is complete, it can hold things up considerably, as permissions granters are sometimes notoriously slow to respond. You may also find that you have to chase down and locate additional sources for permissions, which can be time-consuming.

When you email or write for permission, use the sample permission request letter. Please request all world rights, all languages, and all media for the life of the product.

All permissions must be in writing or in emails and sent to your Acquisitions or Development Editor, along with copies of your original letters or emails requesting permission and a list of manuscript pages where the quotations appear. Be sure to retain a copy of each email or letter for your files.

Requirements from Copyright Holders

Some copyright holders require that specific credit lines appear in the book. If this is the case for your project, make a list of the required copyright acknowledgments exactly as they should appear in the book. If the copyright holder has indicated a particular placement (i.e., on the chapter opening page of a reprinted chapter), please note that on your list. Otherwise, all copyright information will appear in the front of the book. The permissions agreement will stipulate if a fee is required and the terms of payment.