About the Kopinor agreement
Copying and further use must comply with the terms of the Kopinor agreement. Copying should supplement, not replace, purchasing published material. UiO pays a collective fee to Kopinor for this purpose.
Different rules apply to copying, usage, and further distribution of these materials. Sharing teaching materials without permission may constitute a legal offence or a breach of contract.
The following information is primarily based on guidelines prepared by Universities Norway (UHR) and Kopinor.
What does this mean for you as a teacher/employee?
What can you copy?
The Kopinor agreement gives license to copy from all legally published material, both Norwegian and foreign, such as books, journals, magazines, and newspapers, including content from the internet. Read more about how much you can copy further down the page.
How can you use the copies?
All copyrighted material that you make available must be labelled with a copyright notice. The author's name, title of the work, and source must be specified.
Copies may only be used for internal duplication and purposes. This means they can only be used for purposes within education, research, and administration, and solely by UiO employees, students, or others adequately connected to UiO. Furthermore, digital copies can only be shared via internal, closed systems, such as a digital learning platform with login access or by email to staff/students.
Note: There are specific rules for making curriculum and other necessary study material available as book excerpts. Read more about this and compendiums further down the page.
What can you not do through the Kopinor agreement?
The Kopinor agreement does not cover copying of audio and video, computer programmes and games, or original works of art and photographs, among others. You cannot copy in a manner that resembles a publisher's presentation, except for the compendia allowed under the agreement.
The Kopinor agreement does not authorise you to share protected material on open websites or closed external websites. Such open or external sharing of your own educational material may also violate others' rights if the material was created collaboratively. If copyrighted educational material was produced by multiple people, all copyright holders must agree to open or external sharing in advance. You cannot decide this alone, even if you are one of the authors or producers of the material. Open or external sharing may also conflict with obligations you have towards UiO.
Read more in the Agreement on Accessibility of Teaching Material on the Internet (pdf).
How much can you copy?
Books and book excerpts
Up to 15% of a book’s total page count can be copied for an individual student or course participant. If a book excerpt exceeds 15% of the book’s total page count, permission must be obtained from the relevant rights holders, and an additional fee paid. This can be cleared through Bolk, see the section on compendiums.
Academic journals
If the institution has access to journals via a subscription/license agreement, the terms of that agreement apply. Otherwise, under the Kopinor agreement, one article per issue of a scientific journal may be copied per person per semester.
Other sources
From periodicals like newspapers, general magazines, and similar, and from material legally posted on open internet sites, no limitation on extent applies. This includes material published under an open license by the originator and certain public publications. Separate rules apply for copying sheet music.
Compendiums
Curriculum and other book excerpts copied and made available either digitally or in printed form must be pre-cleared via Kopinor's digital solution (Bolk). Bolk can also be used for clearance beyond the 15% allowed by the agreement.
Registration and clearance in Bolk are handled by the UiO's Compendium Department.
Cleared excerpts are marked with a copyright notice and made digitally available to students through the reading list system Leganto. Students can also order the cleared excerpts as traditional compendiums in print format from UiO's Graphic Centre.
Read more
- Information to students on the use and sharing of teaching material
- The Norwegian Intellectual Property Act [in Norwegian]