Social media
Your own work
When sharing your own work (text, images etc) on social media sites such as Instagram and X, please be aware that although you will retain copyright, in sharing it you usually agree to license your content to the company. It can then be used in any way set out in the site’s terms of service so it’s worth carefully checking what these say so that you’re clear as to the implications of sharing content. Consider sharing a link to the original work rather than uploading content directly.
If your content is reposted on other sites and this is done without your permission, then as the holder you can ask the person/company infringing your copyright to remove your material.
Facebook – Terms of Service
Instagram – Terms of Use | Instagram Help Centre
TikTok – Terms of Service | TikTok (4.9) See also Intellectual Property Policy | TikTok
X – Terms of Service (choose UK version) See also Fair use policy (please note this is based on US law)
Other people’s work
If you do not own the copyright in a work, do not upload it to a site without the permission of the copyright holder. A better approach is to share a link to the original content, or reuse material available under a Creative Commons licence (following the terms of the licence to avoid infringing copyright). It may also be possible to share extracts of work by relying on the legal exceptions for quotation or parody, caricature and pastiche exceptions.
Scholarly networks
Services such as SSRN, ResearchGate and Academia.edu enable researchers to create an account and upload copies of their research output. This is then visible both to the academic community and the general public. The copyright policies of these services state that the account holder is responsible for ensuring that they have the right to share this material. Many journal publishers allow authors to share the Author Accepted Manuscript but not the final published version of a paper, please either check individual journal policies before uploading content or make use of sites such as Sherpa Romeo or ‘How can I share it?’.
SSRN – Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy
ResearchGate – Intellectual Property Policy
Academia.edu – Copyright Policy
Please note that posting a version of your article on SSRN is not sufficient to comply with the REF Open Access Policy. Email us your manuscripts along with the date of acceptance.