Copyright Policy of The Forensic Institute Research Network (FIRN)

Purpose of the Copyright Policy

The main purpose of The Online Journal of the Forensic Institute is to provide rapid, peer reviewed communications of broad interest to the forensic science community. The Journal is “open access” whereby original articles are published on the Journal web site and may be downloaded and distributed free of charge.

The principle that we will operate is that copyright is held by the author who assigns the journal a nonexclusive right to publish.

The Policy then, is;

1. The author retains ownership of the copyright but grants the Journal a nonexclusive license to publish.
2. Author warrants that the work is original (the work of the author) and infringes no rights of others (i.e., no copyright infringements and no defamation).
3. Author agrees to indemnify the Journal against suits for such infringements.

Permission Guidelines

It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain the necessary permissions for copyrighted material. These permissions must be in writing and signed by the copyright holder. This is usually the publisher. This applies even if you are the author of the copyrighted material. Copyright permission requests are often unanswered or may take several weeks for the reply. You should start the process as soon as you know that you intend to use copyrighted material. We will require a copy of the permissions and will require you to warrant that no copyrighted material has been used without permission.

Permission is required for:

1. A passage from a play, poem or song
2. A quote of 50 or more words from a periodical or journal
3. A quote (or series of shorter quotes) totalling 400 or more words from a book
4. Any table, diagram, figure or illustration (line drawing or halftone)

A figure that has been substantially altered does not require permission. However what constitutes substantial change is not well defined. The journal would prefer either completely original figures or to have permission granted.

A source line attributing material to the copyright holder who has granted written permission should be included with the figure, table, photograph or other material covered by the permission. This journal honours copyright holder’s requests for special wording. A sample permission letter is appended.