Publishers Licensing Society - Governance and Authority

Governance and Authority

PLS currently has direct authority from 2,325 publishers based in the UK. It has three owners/ members: the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, the Periodical Publishers Association and the Publishers Association. The PLS Board consists of three senior representatives from each of the publishing trade associations. There are ten Board members in total including the CEO who is an executive director. Two thirds of the Board members are senior executives from publishing houses. As the trade associations are representative of the UK publishing industry, this ensures that the PLS Board is also representative of the UK publishing industry.

PLS also represents publishers that have not yet signed the PLS mandate, but whose works have been copied. PLS will collect royalties for those publishers and hold them on trust until they can be paid to the rightful owners. In turn, PLS gives authority to CLA to include publishers’ rights within the collective licences that it sells to information users; typically educational institutions, government departments and businesses in the UK. PLS distributes copyright royalties back to publishers by way of distributions.