Copyright in
Medical Communications

Tracy Forrester, Manager, Reprint Operations at CCC, shares her perspective below.

A reprint is a professionally produced, commercial quality reprint of a complete scholarly published journal article. The journal article can be customized with a cover page, code or disclaimer, and may be black and white or color. Reprints are produced in bulk quantities and distributed for external use, often for promotional or marketing purposes. A permission request does not involve printing or delivery of material. A permission request is purely clearance of published material to be reused or shared to a wide audience. Permission requests usually stem from customers who would like to share or display a portion of an article, such as a figure, chart or image in a presentation to a large audience.

23 April 2025

CCC reached out to Leslie Lansman, Global Permissions Manager at Springer Nature, based in the UK, for her perspective on this reader question.   

When sending promotional or medical materials by email to external healthcare providers, you may wish to include links to bibliographic references to support your message. However, rules around hyperlinks can vary depending on the jurisdiction. Therefore, it’s always best to reach out to the rightsholder or your organization’s copyright officer or legal counsel for guidance about how your particular use may be treated in your jurisdiction.  That said, here are some considerations to help evaluate your use case:  

• Is the content behind a paywall or a website that requires a subscription to access? In these cases, depending on your use, you may need to acquire additional permission from the rightsholder to share with a wider audience.  

• Be aware of where you are linking to. You should never link to content you know or have reason to believe is a pirated, infringing, or otherwise a copy that was uploaded without the authorisation of the copyright holder. 

• Consider any website terms and conditions. Does the rightsholder require you to provide proper attribution or other identification when linking to their work? You should never share any link in a manner that passes off the content as your own or otherwise implies any untrue affiliation between you and the original publication’s authors or publishers.  

While, depending on your use case, you may be able to hyperlink to content on a webpage, remember, this does not mean you are free to copy and paste the content that appears on the webpage elsewhere without permission. If in doubt, it is advisable to contact the website owner or review the website’s relevant terms and conditions or follow up with your organization’s copyright expert or legal team. 

16 April 2025

Erin Callahan, Senior Director of Information and Content Solutions at CCC, shares her perspective below.

There are differences between referencing and reusing content. In this example, you should be able to talk about the underlying research from the article, build upon that research, and reference the article and its publication without obtaining additional permission from the publisher. You may even describe in detail the way you developed a technical illustration included in the article and share the title of the article with your audience. But, if you want to use the technical drawing in the slides you plan to present to attendees at the conference, and the Copyright Transfer Agreement doesn’t account for that use, you will need to request additional permission from the publisher. 

9 April 2025