Partnership Licensing

Allowing access to your licensed resources

• Would you?• Could you?

• Should you?

Eduserv Chest Team 16 Sept 16

1. Your student - access is allowed

2. Not your student – all access if you have an extension to your standard licence

3. Student of one of your partners – access may not be allowed

Partnerships - giving access to online resources

• Eduserv Student Decision Maker Tool – if the answer is generally yes to all questions the student is YOURS and should be included in your core licence!

• www.eduserv.org.uk/decisionmaker

Are the students yours?

HEFCE definitions• For the purposes of HEIFES, ‘college’ means the college including its

connected undertakings• An ‘undertaking’ includes a body corporate, a partnership, an unincorporated

association or a trust. An undertaking is connected if:• The college controls that undertaking.• The college and another undertaking connected with the college control

that undertaking.• Another undertaking or other undertakings connected with the college

control that undertaking.• That undertaking is recognised by us as a connected institution as defined

by section 27 of the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998• the sole or main purposes, of registering students at that undertaking is to

avoid those students being included within the college’s student number control allocation.

HEFCE 2012 explanations• A little background, we view validation and registration as two very different things...easiest to think in terms of schools and

exam boards. Validation is simply about the setting and maintaining of standards for exams. An HE student no more belongs to the validating HEI than a student sitting A-levels belongs to the A-level exam board they belong to their school, in the same way a student doing a degree belongs to the institution they are registered with not the validating HEI who is essentially an exam board.

• 1) what do HEFCE mean by “validation” and who should report the student on their HESA return? It doesn’t matter who designs the course or who validates it (which may be the same or different people) it is who they are registered with, that is to say who ultimately is the fee paid to.

• 2) what do HEFCE mean by “franchised in” and who should report a franchised in student on their HESA return? A franchised-in student is a student where the fee is ultimately paid to one body but the student is taught by another, they are franchised-in at the teaching institution they should be on the HESA record (or FE equivalent the ILR) of the registering institution.

• 3) what do HEFCE mean by “franchised out” and who should report a franchised out student on their HESA return? The person franchising-out should report the student, that is to say the person who ultimately receives the fee

• 4) if a student attends only a wholly owned overseas campus of an institution, should that institution include the student only in the overseas aggregate or in the overseas aggregate and also the main student record? These students would currently only be on the HESA aggregate offshore return unless they also happen to be temporarily and unavoidably resident outside the UK and remain subject to UK tax on their earnings (read HM forces)

• 5) if a student attends only an overseas campus which is a partnership between the UK institution and an overseas educational institution (or company), is the student reported anywhere on the HESA return? Aggregate offshore only

• 6) finally – is it okay for two HE institutions to report the same student as their own? Can they report half a student each? Can both an HE and FE institution declare the same student either as a whole student or as half a student? A student for a course can only ever be a student of one institution at any one time.

…Students are not yours (UK)

• Sharing may ordinarily be a good thing

But (and there’s always a but!)…

• Not if it’s not legal to do so • If you wish to cover students who are not defined as

yours you need to decide…

Students are not yours…(UK) - 2

How formal is the relationship?• The Chest Educational Use extension may be

appropriateIs the relationship informal?• Validating a qualification? • Who receives the tuition fees?

What about overseas partnerships?

• Publisher territories and local arrangements• Publisher Paranoia (but with some reason)• Depends on who you ask! • Fairness and equality

Students are not yours…(Overseas)

Publisher territories and local arrangements• Agents • Exclusivity in some countries and • Variations in prices• Publishers want a share

Students are not yours… (Overseas) - 2

Publisher Paranoia“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

• Loss of data• Loss of control• Loss of revenue

Students are not yours …(Overseas) - 3

Depends on who you ask!• UK Account Managers • Getting to the right person may be tricky • Change in management• Change in ownership

Students are not yours …Overseas - 4

Fairness and equality / consistency

• Between institutions• Between partners in same territories• Regular review

Why partner access to Chest Agreement licences can be difficult Publisher has restricted rights The publisher may not be entitled to sell in the partner territory – his own rights might preclude

the territory or he may have exclusively assigned the territory to an agent. Equally, to avoid reputational damage, a publisher may not wish to sell into a territory where he does not have an adequate support organisation.

Publisher’s sales organisation The way a publisher is organised may mean it’s difficult for the UK licence to be extended to

the partner territory. For example the salesman (or agent) in the partner territory may feel the UK salesman is stealing his commission. These issues can usually be avoided by escalating them to the right level in the publisher’s organisation.

Nature of a licence It’s important to remember that with any licence you don’t own anything, so just because it’s

physically possible to do something it doesn’t mean you are entitled to do it. The resource remains owned by the publisher, he grants you the right to access and use his

property (his resource). As the owner, he is at liberty to place whatever restrictions he chooses on you.

Licence boundaries A licence is a right to use something or to do something. The right is granted to a specified

individual or entity. So a driving licence allows the specific driver (and only the specified driver) to use the roads, a television licence allows broadcasts to be received at the specified property and only that property. The right does not automatically extended to other entities or people just because they are related. Your spouse needs their own driver’s licence. If you own adjacent houses, you need a TV licence for each of them. In the same way a publisher’s licence is granted to the university only and not all of its partners and associates.

Apart from a few flat fee licences, Chest licences are granted to a number users – this may be the number of users in absolute terms or according to some or other banding or scaling. It is logical and fair that if the number of users is exceeded, e.g. because the students from an overseas partners were added, then an extra fee should be due.

Commercial reality Your university choses to be involved with the overseas partner for financial reasons. There

is no reason why the publisher, a separate entity with its own financial considerations, should be expected to subsidise the university’s investment by making the publisher’s property (the resource) available to more students without charge.

Contractual hierarchy A publisher’s relationship/transaction with you is defined by the terms of the licence you have

agreed with him and not by the plans and policies of the government or your university. The licence is a private agreement between two parties. The government is not a party to the licence, so government policy does not automatically change the licence. The university is a party to the agreement but any change to a private agreement requires the consent of both parties, so the university cannot insist that a licence is extended to its overseas partner(s).

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Are partners all the same?

14 responders reported that at all their partners only:1. 42% - deliver their courses2. 39% - students are in their student record system3. 46% - students are registered in their IT/Library system4. 14% - they receive tuition fees for the students5. 16% - students are reported in your statutory returns

Partnerships are different and so different collection policies for each type of partnership are needed

Annex A - Option for Extended Educational Purposes

• A1 …the Licensee may extend its rights by submitting an Order for this Option and by paying the Fee shown on the Website.

• A2 …the definition of “Authorised User” in clause 1.1 (a) of the Main Body shall additionally include any person authorised by the Licensee to access its information services via Secure Access and to use the Licensed Material on-site or off-site, in connection with any Educational Purpose of the Licensee who is not already covered by the rights granted under clause 2 of the Main Body.

• A3 All other terms and conditions of the Licence Agreement are unaffected and continue to apply with full effect.

Case Study - Emerald

Extended Educational Use

• Earliest publisher to use our model• Flat fee for core charges (based on product)• Low percentage of core fee

Case Study - APA

Extended Educational Use

• A model exists! • Combination of FTE numbers and location determines

fee• Usually treated as a separate “tiered” site

Case Study - Euromonitor

Extended Educational Use

• Recognised the issue• Wanted a fair and equitable solution • Based on number of students (tiered)• Percentage of core fee

Essential licence conditions

Even where the student from a partner is allowed access, the usual constraints apply –

• educational purpose only • no commercial use/commercial gain • limits on copying or incorporated into other works • no selling, leasing or sublicensing

some resources

• Middlesex University - Building an international authentication strategy on OpenAthens

• Aston University - Replacing Shibboleth with OpenAthens to transform online in

formation access

• Bath Spa University - OpenAthens helps Bath Spa University increase use of protected resources by 35 percent

• Glossary

• OpenAthens Customer Event on 9 November

Questions

Questions

• what are you doing now?

• why are (Chest) software licences different?

Chest Agreements – we are here to help

• Thanks for listening

• Q & A

• Martyn Jansen – Contracts & Legal Manager Martyn.Jansen@eduserv.org.uk

• Nikki Green – Business Development Manager Nikki.Green@eduserv.org.uk