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EditData Surveys
The CLA needs to find out what has been copied by all the various licensees to enable them to ensure that revenues are distributed to rightsholders in a way that fairly reflects usage of publications that have been copied. This data is collected in a variety of ways.
Finding out what is copied by:
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Schools ][
Language Schools ][
Universities ][
Businesses ][
Government ][
NHS ][
Abroad ]
EditSchools
CLA surveys
CLA carries out surveys of publications that are being copied in schools. The survey schedules are rotated to take into consideration the different types and sizes of schools across the UK.
Record keeping surveys are used which analyse levels of photocopying carried out at pre-selected photocopiers over a period of weeks, and agreed in advance with the licensee.
Schools’ staff are simply required to produce an extra copy of just one page identifying the bibliographic details, and to record on a label provided by CLA the number of pages copied, and the number of copies made. CLA can then identify the title being copied, and the copy quantities. These duplicates are regularly collected by the CLA field officer.
In conjunction with this, meter readings from pre-selected copiers are recorded and this data is used to inform the licence fee distributions to rightsowners.
Licensees are not required to participate in a data collection exercise more than once a year.
Schools targeted for data collection
250 schools per term are selected throughout the UK. With three terms per year, this means that 750 schools will be selected each year to provide photocopy data.
Sampling
Data is collected over a three term period. That year’s worth of data is then added to the ‘distribution pool’ of data which is used to inform the licence fee revenue payments. However the data pool used is limited to three years. Therefore as new data is added, the oldest set of data (Year 3) becomes redundant and is removed from the pool, so the oldest 1/3 of data is continually refreshed on an annual and rolling basis.
‘Representativeness’
To ensure that licence fees payments to publishers represent copying practices throughout the UK, schools’ survey schedules are designed and rotated to take into consideration the different types and sizes of schools across all regions of the UK, including Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Distribution Errors
Distribution errors are usually rare, however the vast majority of errors are of two kinds:
• a publisher receiving an incorrect amount of money
If a cheque payment has been made, the cheque will be cancelled, and fees will be correctly allocated with cheque and back-up information produced to the correct value.
If payment has been cleared by the publisher, a manual adjustment will occur and monies will be paid to the correct publisher in the next distribution. Meanwhile the account that has been overpaid will be underpaid in preceding distributions until the correct balance is restored.
• a payment is made to the wrong publisher
Should a publisher be paid for copying of titles that do not belong to them, they are asked to contact the PLS offices. The publisher will be asked either to return the payment or a decision will be taken for PLS to recoup the balance from preceding distributions until a positive balance is restored. This money is then reallocated to the correct publisher and payment made in the next mini distribution.
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EditTitles Copied by Language Schools
The selection of language schools is based on size. Staff are asked to provide a list of all textbooks used in their teaching sessions during the past six months, and also a list of all magazines and journals used to supplement the teaching material in the same period. Key teaching staff are asked initially to complete copying diaries, and are then interviewed about the use of photocopied material in their teaching, including an estimation of copy volumes and types of material copied. The selection covers the range of courses run by each institution.
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EditTitles Copied by Universities
Photocopying Surveys
CLA carries out surveys of publications that are being copied in HEIs. This data is used to ensure that revenues are distributed to rightsholders in a way that reflects usage of publications that have been copied.
Record keeping surveys are used which analyse levels of photocopying carried out at pre-selected photocopiers over a period of weeks, and agreed in advance with the licensee.
Two surveys are carried out in each academic year during the autumn and spring terms:
In the state sector 6 HEIs are selected for surveyd each term, so that in each academic year a total of 6 pre-92 HEIs, 5 post-92 HEIs and 1 SCOP college are selected. Each survey is of 6 weeks duration.
A monitored data collection is carried out in a selected number of university libraries per term (1 Pre-92, 1 post-92 per term plus any SCOP or independent HEI surveyed).
Departments for survey are selected to cover 60% of FTEs in UUK HEIs and 100% of FTEs in SCOP and independent colleges.
The departments are selected so that in any annual survey the proportional numbers of FTEs surveyed in different academic disciplines matches the most recent figures published by HESA.
Data is collected from copies made by academic staff at the department photocopiers and by students in the library. The departmental data reporting is through voluntary posting of an extra copy of the title or identifier page into the survey collection box. The library data collection is monitored by student data collectors.
Reprographics units are also surveyed on a voluntary data reporting basis.
Course Packs
Course packs produced during the survey term are requested from central resources and departments participating in the survey.
HEI staff and students are simply required to produce an extra copy of just one page, and to record the number of pages copied, plus the number of copies made so CLA can identify the title being copied and copy quantities. This additional information is written on a label provided by CLA, which is then attached to the original duplicate copy. These duplicates are regularly collected by the CLA field officer. In conjunction with this, meter readings from pre-selected copiers are recorded at each collection throughout the survey period and this data is used to inform the licence fee distributions to rights owners. CLA may, no more than once in each year, require the Licensee to participate in a data collection exercise.
Sampling
Data is collected and added to the distribution pool for bi-annual distributions from 6 surveys’ worth of data (3 years). A three-year data pool is used for distribution with survey 1 data dropping out as survey 7 data is added into the rolling programme. Three years’ data is used in order to ensure representation of the full range of subjects taught in UK universities.
Scanning Surveys
HEI’s using the trial scanning licence are required to give CLA details of all of the material scanned under the licence and the total number of students having access to each of the scanned extracts. Because this amounts to a census of all the scanning usage under the licence there is no need to aggregate the data into three year pools. Each distribution uses scanning data from a single licence period.
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EditTitles Copied by Businesses
Businesses are not willing to keep records of copying in the sort of detail normally required of the education sector, as CLA discovered in their original discussions with the CBI, and other work they carried out more recently. The data collection methods used in Business (and also in Public Administration) are therefore designed to compile information about what publications are available to be copied, and of those publications what categories are most likely to be copied in various business sectors.
Information Audits (IA)
Licensees are asked to provide a list of publications that they own and publications to which they subscribe
Categorical Research Survey (CRS)
around 10% of the licensees are selected from each sector to take part, to discover
• the level of copying carried out under the licence;
• the proportion of that copying which is carried out between books, magazines and journals;
• a broad subject classification of copying.
We select a representative sample of the licensees’ senior staff members, who are asked to keep a diary of the titles copied and the number of copies for one month.
They are asked to ensure that the diary is representative of the copying done by their department or section.
When the period of the diary is complete the licensee staff members are interviewed by CLA representatives who ask about the volume of copying, the split of copying between books, journals and magazines and about the subject of the material copied.
The questions relating to subject matter are specially designed for each business sector by reference to the information audits collected from licensees in that sector.
Category Map
The responses from the Information Audits and the Categorical Research Surveys are collated together to make a “Category Map” which is used to select titles from the Information Audits relating to each business sector. The titles are selected in proportion to the level of use reported in the CRS.
Distribution of Fees
Once the titles have been selected for each sector the licence fees collected from that sector are divided between all of the titles selected.
This enables CLA to provide PLS and ALCS with a full listing of all the publications featuring in the distribution analysis and individual title fee amounts. PLS and ALCS then complete the distribution to individual rightsholders according to
their calculations.
It is important to note that this method of distribution was implemented fully only in 2007 for the Business Distribution with an initial implementation in a few sectors in late 2006. Business licensing has increased greatly in the last few years, following on from the implementation in UK law of a European directive making it clear that copying of any copyright material for commercial purpose without a licence was an infringement of copyright. Until recently the licence fee income from business was not sufficient to support such a detailed distribution methodology. Fees were previously distributed on the basis of Information Audits only with an equal allocation given to each title appearance, with a minimum value of £10 per title. The implementation of Categorical Research Surveys has shown that some publications are copied much more than others, and in most sectors the most copied publications are the “Trade Press” of that sector. Recent distributions have paid more money to those publications as a result.
New Method
CLA has been reviewing the data collection from business as the revenue has grown. The implementation of the Copyright Directive in October 2003 led to a significant increase in the number of new licences. CLA has been obtaining an increasing number of information audits which include subscriptions, recent acquisitions and holdings. This led initially to a much larger number of titles.
In March 2006, the selection of titles was refined in three industry sectors by making a random selection of titles in the sectors where there was a very large volume of data, to give a minimum average value in the CLA distribution of £10 per title.
CLA has now completed implementation of a new distribution method for the allocations from business licences. This has meant that some sectors of industry have been merged because the data from them were very similar. In these payments the allocations have been refined by combining the audits with questionnaires about copying over a two- to four-week period. CLA has also applied a £10 minimum average value per title in
these sectors. Publishers may see fluctuations in their payments as the revised distribution methodology is implemented.
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EditCentral Government
Data is collected using information audits, and questionnaires about copying over a typical two-week period. CLA has a three-year programme of data collection from central government.
This data is used to allocate the fees to titles. The value of the fees in each distribution is an estimate of the amount that CLA expects to receive from these departments over the 3 year period. As information from the departments is gathered, the payments from the departments are mapped to the data.
As the system does not allow us to use the same period more than once for each distribution type it was decided to keep the period ussed for this distribution in line with the last Business distribution which took place in March.
The old and new journals splits will continue to be applied until the data collection is completed.
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EditNHS
For the category-based payment, the total volume of copying and the type of publications in the NHS surveys are examined. The total number of copies is mapped to Dewey Decimal Code to obtain the category (subject area) makeup of the survey data. Titles are then obtained using the categories found in the surveys (volume, type of publication, subject area) using Nielson (for books) and Ulrich's (for magazines and journals). This method of selecting publications ensures that title coverage is much greater than could be achieved in the same timescale with surveys alone, enabling allocations to titles whose chance of being picked up in a survey is quite low.
The other NHS payment is based on survey data using the data pool that was created for the first NHS payments. As a reminder CLA used the data from each survey once during the first three NHS payments and then combined this information ito a pool for subsequent payments.
Current Survey Scheme
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EditForeign non-title specific payments
When money comes in from some countries, it is impossible to tell what was copied, because of the different way in which data is collected in some countries. For information about how this money is allocated, see the
Copying Abroad page.