Copyright at the Fund

The Communications Department (COM) oversees publishing at the Fund, including internal and external publications, and communications such as blogs and social media. 

General Communications Guidance may be found in The COM How-To Guide. 

Please read below for help with all your publishing needs, including working with external publishers, non-IMF authors, and obtaining permission to use Third-Party Materials in your work. 

In all your publishing endeavors, please allow plenty of time to ensure the relevant steps are taken. 

The Publisher Division (COMPD) manages the IMF Publishing Program and is the clearinghouse for all publications issued by the IMF or co-published with other institutions.  COMPD's intranet page provides information on clearance procedures and publishing at the Fund.

Contact Information:

Copyright@IMF.org for copyright questions

COMPD@IMF.org for  all other publishing questions

When is permission required?

To avoid copyright infringement when using third-party content in external publications, you need to ensure you have the appropriate rights. In some cases, these rights have already been granted and you just need to do your due diligence, in some cases you need to get specific permission. 

Use of third-party material needs to be cleared well ahead of intent to publish. 

• If you are using data from third-party commercial providers licensed by the IMF, ensure that your use is permitted by the terms of the license.  Find out how in this guide's section on Using Data Licensed by the IMF.
• If you are using material from already published IMF publications, you should be able to use the material without additional permission (avoid re-using photos and images as they may have been licensed for use in that specific publication only). 
• For content from non-IMF publications, you need to check the usage rights granted by the copyright holder of the publication. This is generally the journal or publisher rather than the author. If a website, you may also find the terms of use in a link at the bottom (see this guide's section on Using Free Content From the Internet.)
• You may also use RightFind Advisor, a database the IMF subscribes to from the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). The CCC is a rights clearing center that has reciprocal arrangements with different publishers.  Under this license with the CCC, some usage rights have already been negotiated and you can look up what they include. 

If your use is not covered, you will most likely need to obtain permission:

• If the content is with a licensed provider, please work with the IMF Library: Library@IMF.org.
• If the content is from a website or a publication, follow the instructions given by the publisher / website. 

Are there exceptions?  

Occasionally, your work may benefit from including an excerpt or quote from third-party material. Generally, a very small excerpt from a book, a short quote from a journal, a data point from a figure (not a copy or close reproduction of an entire table or graph) can be used without requesting permission.  

Please see below for templates you can download and use:

Permission Template

Permission Log 

Work-for-Hire 

All works created by IMF employees within the scope of their employment are, by copyright law, works made-for-hire and are owned and copyrighted by the IMF. 

Hiring External Contributors/Consultants

If a department hires an independent contractor or third party (i.e., a company or individual who is not an IMF employee) to produce content, IMF gets full copyright only if it is stipulated in the contract that the commissioned work is a work made for hire. The hiring department should work with the Legal Department to include the IMF’s standard work-for-hire clause in the contract.

External co-authors

If you are working with a non-IMF author in a collaborative arrangement instead of a contractual arrangement, your coauthors will generally be required to sign a consent-to-publish (CTP) form assigning copyright to the IMF. Contact copyright@IMF.org if you have questions or need a CTP form. 

If you are publishing your work externally and receive a publishing agreement or journal form, please forward the document to COMPD-AST@IMF.org. The Publisher Division will review the agreement and arrange for the document to be signed. COMPD has negotiated IMF-specific agreements with several journals.