8. Comics, Copyright and Academic Publishing: The Deluxe Edition

The Comics Grid is one of a small but growing cohort of scholarly publications dedicated to the study of comics that has emerged in recent years. As an academic and a long-standing comics fan, The Comics Grid appeals to me for a number of reasons: first, it is committed to the principles of open access and open peer review; second, it genuinely embraces the potential that digital publication offers to academics in its commitment to rapid scholarly publication; and third, to my knowledge, it is the only journal in this domain that is actively trying to improve the study of comics by educating its authors and readers – in an informed and reasonable way – about copyright and the place of copyright in comics scholarship. This article is intended to supplement the work that The Comics Grid has already begun in challenging some cherished myths about the use of copyright material in the context of comics (and other academic) scholarship. It considers the extent to which UK-based academics can rely upon the copyright regime – the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 – to reproduce extracts and excerpts from published comics and graphic novels without having to ask the copyright owner of those works for permission. In doing so, it hopes to encourage greater openness in discourse and debate about a medium that occupies an increasingly significant place within our cultural and political lives. Moreover, within this chapter, we might also begin to sow the seeds of a broader, necessary debate about the nature, demands and process of academic publishing.