Spare Rib, the trailblazing women’s magazine that defined generations of feminism, faces the axe from the British Library’s digital archive if there is no Brexit deal, it has emerged.

The magazine ran from 1972 to 1993, and all 11,000 articles, cartoons and photographs were made digitally available in 2015 as part of the joint efforts of the British Library (BL) and the Spare Rib Collective.

But BL has now written to researchers to tell them that if there is no agreement on exiting from the EU, they will have no choice but to suspend access to their digital archives for copyright reasons, although they will still be able to access the archive in person.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spare Rib issue 122 from September 1982 Photograph: British Library

More than half of the digital archive does not have specific copyright consent from their authors, but the library is protected from legal action under the EU’s orphan works directive.

“It is with great regret that I have to tell you that the British Library may have to suspend access to the Spare Rib archive in the event of the UK’s departure from the European Union without a deal.

“If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, the library will no longer be able to use the EU copyright exception, which currently applies to a substantial proportion of the archive under the EU orphan works directive,” said Polly Russell, curator for contemporary politics and public life at BL in an email to a researcher.

She said she would be personally devastated if access to the resource was suspended.

The development is one of the more unexpected impacts of a no-deal Brexit. Spare Rib was a significant contributor to feminism and the counterculture movement in the 1970s and 1980s. The removal from the library would be a blow to universities around the world, which would be denied access to its articles and polemics.

The magazine, whose editors included Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe, set out to redefine what it was to be a woman in 20th-century Britain. It documented the evolution of the women’s movements and became a crucible exploring the internal struggles as various strands of feminism simultaneously became more radicalised and part of the mainstream social political debate in Britain.

For example, in 1982 it took up the cause of black women. Discourse in the wake of the Brixton riots led to an examination of black women’s experience in institutions such as the NHS and police forces.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spare Rib issue 7 from January 1973 Photograph: Journal Archives

A spokesman for the library said it was contacting researchers this week. He described the digital archive as “a fantastic resource relating to the second wave of feminism” and invaluable to researchers and gender studies students all over the world.

Although other publications could be affected by the disappearance of the EU copyright protections for digital archives, Spare Rib was the most impacted because of the quantity of material. While copies of Spare Rib will still be physically available through BL’s London HQ, the library’s preference is to minimise the physical wear and tear of the magazines in its archive, most of which are more than 45 years old.

The EU orphan works directive came into force in 2012, enabling national libraries to make books, newspaper articles and magazines that may be protected under copyright law available to readers if the author of the article could not be reached. Orphan works are not available for commercial use, but led to a wave of digitisation programmes across Europe.

Spare Rib was digitised in 2015, but the library could not contact all the authors, cartoonists or photographers to gain copyright consent, leaving it with 57% of material covered by the EU copyright waiver.

A section on the BL website dedicated to the groundbreaking magazine will remain available even in a no-deal scenario, a spokesman said.