Copyright and source policy

A GeoBrief Weekly brief is an original educational work. The summary, geographical context, questions, stretch tasks and teacher guidance are written by our editors for the classroom. They are not a substitute for reading the underlying journalism, and we encourage teachers and students to follow the source links.

• Complete news articles, or extracts long enough to replace reading the original
• Publisher copy passed off as our own writing
• Images whose licence we have not checked
• Statistics we have not traced to a named primary source

Where a short quotation is genuinely necessary to make a point, it is kept brief, marked as a quotation, and attributed to the publication it came from.

For every story a brief draws on, we record and display:

• The publication and, where named, the journalist
• The article title and a link to the original
• The date it was published and the date we accessed it

Source lists are printed in the PDF packs as well as on the website, so a pack that leaves our site keeps its attribution. Removing those source lists or credits from a pack is not permitted under the classroom licence.

We use only:

• Images we have been given permission to use
• Openly licensed images, used within the terms of that licence
• Public domain photography
• Openly licensed maps
• Original diagrams and charts drawn by us from cited datasets

Photographs and illustrations are drawn largely from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons and public domain licences. Each image carries the creator credit and licence name recorded when it was selected, and those credits are printed with the picture.

Locator maps use place coordinates from OpenStreetMap, retrieved through its Nominatim service. Map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors and is available under the Open Database Licence.

Every image carries a rights status before it can appear anywhere on the site or in a pack:

Approved

The licence has been checked and permits reuse. The image may be published.

Attribution required

Publishable, but only alongside the credit and licence name recorded with the image. Our packs print that credit under the picture.

Unverified

The licence has not yet been confirmed. Never published.

Do not publish

Checked and found unsuitable for reuse. Never published, and retained only so the same picture is not proposed again.

Figures quoted in a brief are traced to a named primary source — a statistical agency, scientific body, government department or the dataset behind a news report — with the date we accessed it. Figures we have not been able to verify are either removed before publication or shown to teachers as unverified. We do not publish unsupported claims.

Specification titles, codes and content statements belong to the awarding bodies that publish them. References to Cambridge International, Pearson Edexcel and AQA specifications are made for identification, so teachers can find the material relevant to the course they teach.

GeoBrief Weekly is an independent publisher. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by any awarding body, and our specification links are our own editorial judgement rather than an official mapping. Always check the current specification published by the awarding body.

We would rather hear from you than have you discover a problem elsewhere. Email geobriefweekly@gmail.com with:

• A link to the brief, and where on the page the material appears
• What the material is, and what right you hold in it
• Whether you would like it credited differently, or removed

We aim to acknowledge within two working days. Where a complaint is well founded we will correct the credit or remove the material, and we will withdraw it from the affected packs while we look into it. Packs already downloaded by subscribers cannot be recalled, which is one reason we check licences before publication rather than after.

The written briefs, questions, teacher guidance, original diagrams and the design of the packs are our copyright. Subscribers get a classroom licence to use them, set out in the terms of use. That licence does not transfer ownership.