The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) has agreed, with United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), an extension to its royalty-free licence on behalf of its four member organisations - the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS), the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) and the Picture Industry Collecting Society for Effective Licensing (PICSEL). This extended licence agreement follows the revisions to the REF timetable due to COVID-19, and allows the continued storage and reuse of relevant research outputs for REF 2021 to be copyright-compliant.
Dates in the UKRI-CLA Agreement have been extended to allow for a revised REF submission deadline of March 2021 and an amended assessment period to 31 March 2022. Additionally, eligibility for outputs has been revised so that they remain in-scope of the licence if, exceptionally, they will be published up to 31 March 2021 where publication has been delayed by COVID-19. All other terms of the UKRI-CLA Agreement continue to apply unaltered, including the licence end date which remains 30 June 2022.
The agreement between CLA and UKRI is available on the REF website here.