How to reuse figures or tables from your published article

By Craig Myles
Senior Rights Coordinator with SAGE's Legal Department

As a SAGE Journal Author, you may find yourself needing to reuse figures or tables from your published article, such as for a conference, report, or a new article. So now what? Do you need permission to reuse your own content? Will you need to pay a fee?

Here’s a little guidance to help clarify matters when it comes to reusing your published content.

SAGE’s Author Reuse Policy
SAGE is happy to partner with our authors, and we want to make things easy for you. To that end, nearly all of our journals are Green Open Access or fully Open Access.  This means you’re able to reuse the entirety of your work which includes all figures, tables, and images within at no charge to yourself, for specific instances. You can determine which uses are permitted by reviewing our Journal Author Archiving and Reuse Policy. But what about instances that aren’t covered under the policy?

SAGE does allow the additional reuse of content without a fee, within some limitations. Our Pre-Approved Permissions Requests page covers some common uses. 

Finally, for instances not covered above, authors are able to request permission to reuse a limited amount of their content. SAGE is happy to grant journal permission to reuse up to a total of three figures, tables, or images from their articles in another publication, work, or use, at no cost. For excerpts, you can reuse up to a total of 400 words from your work. Authors can still use more content than this if needed, but in these situations a fee might be necessary.

Creative Commons Licenses
If your article published under a Creative Commons license, then you are able to reuse your content freely, provided the use falls within the bounds of your article’s license. A CC-BY license allows you to reuse your content however you want, provided proper attribution to the article and the license. A CC-BY-NC license allows the same provided the content is not used in a commercial manner (such as republishing the content in another’s book or journal, promoting a product or service, etc.). For commercial uses, please seek permission.

Citation Needed
In all instances you will need to include a citation to your original article, and if possible, a link to your article on the SAGE Journals website. Details on proper citation can be found on the Journal Author Policy page. Content reused under a Creative Commons license has specific attribution requirements; please see our Reusing Open Access Content page.

What Isn’t Covered?
If your article contains third-party content you plan to reuse, refer back to the original agreement under which you licensed the material to determine what rights you were granted.  SAGE cannot grant permission to reuse such content.

How Do I Request Permission?
If you’re using more content than permitted under the guidelines, you’ve been asked to get formal permission, or you’re still uncertain whether or not your usage falls within the accepted limits, please reach out directly to our Permissions team by raising a ticket through our SAGE Permissions Portal

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