The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS) holds the copyright for all of the cases in its collection. As the copyright holder, we encourage educational, not-for-profit use of our cases by individual instructors. We will review proposed for-profit uses of our cases, and will often grant permission for a fee—see below.

Here are some ideas that we encourage for the use of our cases:

• Use them in their current form.
• Modify them to fit your classes, or to “personalize” them for your students.
• Use them as examples to develop your own cases.
• Use them as examples of the case study method.

We ask that you acknowledge the author of each case you use and that you cite the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, as the source.

Permissions

An instructor may use our material in their classrooms according to “fair use” guidelines without contacting us for permission, but there are other times in which formal permission is necessary. The rest of this document is intended to clarify our distinction between “standard usage,” which does not require formal permission, and “non-standard usage,” which does.

Standard Usage

Standard usage of case study material means that you do not need to contact us for permission. In order to fall into this category, each of the following conditions is necessary. Usage must be:

• Educational
• Non-profit
• In print format
• Limited in size and scope

Limited in size means that there must be fewer than 100 copies; limited in scope means that there must be fewer than five case studies. Failure to meet any of these conditions means that the usage is “non-standard.”

The following are typical examples of standard usage.

• A high school teacher finds a suitable case. He changes the names of the characters and the location to make the case more interesting to his students. In a suitable place, he notes that the case has been modified from the original, and adds an acknowledgment to the original source and authors. He then prints out copies of the case for the 90 students in the four sections of his AP bio class.

• A college instructor finds a case that will work quite well for her A&P course. She recognizes that the case has probably been used by other instrutors and that it is possible that students might have posted answers to the questions on the Internet. Since students will be evaluated on the basis of the responses to the questions in this case, she goes to Google and does some quick searches for the questions that appear in the case. She then alters the questions somewhat to make it more difficult for students to plagiarize and to make it easier for her to catch any that do. After suitably acknowledging the source of the case and the fact that it has been modified, she then prints out copies, and her teaching assistants distribute and lead discussions of that material during their various labs or recitations.

Non-Standard Usage

Non-standard usage requires our formal permission before you proceed with your plans. Generally this is a quick and easy process that only requires you to fill out our online permissions form. You will then receive a reply (generally within five business days) that will let you know if anything further is required.

If any of the four conditions above is not met, then your usage is considered to be “non-standard.” Generally speaking, any reproduction that is either electronic in format, commercially based, or involves bound material or more than 100 impressions, is considered non-standard and is not authorized without our express written permission.

The following are typical examples of non-standard usage.

• Inclusion of material in a commercial text book.
• Reproduction of several cases in a course reader or lab manual prepared by a college bookstore.
• Posting a case on a website of any kind, including content management systems (CMS) on the Internet or wihin a campus intranet.

If you still have questions after filling out our form, inquiries about permissions can be directed to permissions@sciencecases.org.

Limitations and Restrictions

We strictly control access to the teaching notes for our cases. Re-publication of any kind, in whole or in part (especially of answer keys), is strictly prohibited. The only allowable use of our notes and answer keys is by individual teachers who may print or download a single copy of these materials to prepare for use of a case in their classrooms. Website reproduction of our notes and answer keys is prohibited in all instances. Any exception to these guidelines requires prior written approval.

Copyright

Copyright for most of the case studies on our website is held by the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS). Images on our site that are not owned by NCCSTS are either licensed, used with direct permission from their sources, believed to be in the public domain, or incorporated into our material according to “fair use” guidelines. Proprietary third-party images that appear according to “editorial usage” generally have their sources acknowledged in a credit statement at the bottom of the page on which they appear. Licensed images that have been used strictly for design purposes may be acknowledged, depending on licensing requirements. If you wish to use such an image in addition to our textual content in a manner that goes beyond “fair use,” please visit the original source and contact the owner directly.

Send Us Your Feedback

If you have used one of our cases, we would like to hear from you. Please send us your comments by filling out our online Case Comments Form, which is also accessible from the Case Teaching Notes for any case.

Last Updated: 10/01/09