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Thesis / dissertation formatting manual (2024).

• Filing Fees and Student Status
• Submission Process Overview
• Electronic Thesis Submission
• Paper Thesis Submission
• Formatting Overview
• Fonts/Typeface
• Pagination, Margins, Spacing
• Paper Thesis Formatting
• Preliminary Pages Overview
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures (etc.)
• Acknowledgments
• Text and References Overview
• Figures and Illustrations
• Using Your Own Previously Published Materials
• Using Copyrighted Materials by Another Author
• Open Access and Embargoes
• Copyright and Creative Commons
• Ordering Print (Bound) Copies
• Tutorials and Assistance
• FAQ This link opens in a new window

Copyright page

The use of copyright notice is the prerogative of the copyright owner and does not require advance permission from, or registration with, the U.S. Copyright Office. The use of such notice is highly recommended , because it informs the public that the work is protected by copyright, identifies the copyright owner, and shows the year of first publication.

Generally speaking:

• You should include a copyright statement for yourself for this manuscript.
• You must list copyright holders ​if any portion of your manuscript has been previously published (by you or by another author). See the using previously published materials overview .
• If a copyright statement is not being included, insert a blank page as a substitute. The UCI Libraries strongly recommends that you include a copyright statement.
• Please read the Copyrighted Materials sections (found in the tabs on the left-hand side of this page) for more information.

The notice must contain the following three elements:

• The symbol © (the letter in a circle), or the word "Copyright"
• The year of publication (i.e., the year in which you are filing your manuscript)
• The name of the copyright owner (i.e., your name as it appears on the title page)

Example: © 2015 John Doe

Copyright page example

Here is an example Copyright Page if the thesis/dissertation author is the only copyright holder listed.

If you need to list other copyright holders for other material included in your manuscript, those should be listed above your copyright for your graduate manuscript. Here is an example of a copyright page section with multiple copyrights listed:

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Graduate Thesis Submission Guide

• Thesis Guide
• Formatting Requirements
• Submitting Your Thesis
• Managing References
• Database Pro Tips
• Avoiding Plagiarism This link opens in a new window
• Discoverability, Embargo, and the Scholarly Conversation
• Open Access Images
• Requesting Permission for Copyrighted Materials
• Thesis Collection This link opens in a new window

Copyright and Your Thesis

Respecting copyright — and understanding the basics of copyrighted-related issues — is an important aspect of your thesis-writing process and an issue that will continue to arise throughout your academic and creative career. We know copyright can be intimidating and hard to make sense of: after all, discussions of copyright often stray into complex legal, creative, and ethical terrain. While it isn't necessary for you to be a copyright expert, it is essential that you understand copyright issues as they relate to including and referencing the work(s) of others in your thesis. 

With that in mind, here are our overarching recommendations as you consider which third party materials to include in your thesis: 

• Use open access works and/or works covered by Creative Commons Licenses
• Ensure your use of copyrighted materials counts as "fair use" (in other words, repurpose, reinterpret, or otherwise "transform" the copyrighted work in question)
• Request permission for copyrighted works
• Remove potentially problematic materials entirely from your thesis

We recommend you follow the above guidelines in the order that they're listed ; that is, seek out open access works first to avoid any potential copyright infringements. If you are unable to do so, seek fair use for copyrighted materials. If each of these strategies is unsuccessful, your last resort may be to request permission for copyrighted work[s], or to remove problematic third party content from your thesis entirely if this option fails. The following three subpages — Open Access Images, Fair Use, and Requesting Permission for Copyrighted Materials — breaks each of these issues down into greater detail. 

• Image Use and Copyright for your Thesis (Slides)

Why Does Copyright Matter?

For the purposes of your thesis, you don't need to be an expert in copyright law. However, understanding the major issues and questions around copyright will help you make informed decisions about your thesis and protect it from copyright challenges once it's published. Understanding and respecting copyright is also about giving credit where it's due, an essential aspect of Pratt's Academic Integrity Policy . So while respecting copyright has to do with protecting your thesis from infringement challenges, on a deeper level it also has to do with pursuing your academic and creative work with integrity and acknowledgement of other's contributions.

The following excerpt from Kenneth Crews' article  Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis  summarizes this sentiment well: 

" Finishing your dissertation is exhausting and gratifying. You have invested countless days of research, followed by hours of writing late into the night. You made exciting breakthroughs, and you aspire to a career of further research. You probably did not expect to indulge in copyright at this stage of your study. However, attention to copyright can help avoid pitfalls and reveal opportunities to further your scholarly goals. Given the way that the law operates, copyright law most certainly protects your dissertation as well as the quotations, photographs, music, diagrams, and many other works that you have included in your doctoral study. The decisions you make about copyright can directly affect the quality of your work, your ability to publish your dissertation, and your opportunities for building upon your years of research throughout your career. Attending to the fundamentals of copyright can be important for your scholarship, regardless of your discipline or field of expertise ." (Crews, 2013). 

Copyright Checklist

The following checklist — also summarized from Kenneth Crews' article — should be referred to throughout the process of researching and writing your thesis. Though you might be tempted to put these considerations off until later, remember: any preparation or planning done early on will make things much easier as you get closer to submitting your thesis.  

• Do a thorough sweep or your thesis draft and identify all third-party materials you plan to include in your final project. Common third party materials include images, sources from the Web, and long quotations (over 1.5 pages, single-spaced) from published works. 
• Ask yourself, " Are any of these materials open access ?" If yes, they have no copyright restrictions.
• Ask, " Does my inclusion of this material count as fair use ?" 
• Ask, " Do any of these materials have Creative Commons Licenses ?" Creative Commons Licenses allow for free distribution of otherwise copyrighted works (with proper attribution).  
• For any materials that don't meet the above conditions, ask, " Do I have permission to use these ?" If not, refer to the "Requesting Permission for Copyrighted Materials" page of this guide. 
• Ask, " Am I including any materials that I've created but that have been previously published elsewhere ?" Even if you are the original author of these materials, you will need permission to include them in your thesis. 

Resources and Further Reading

We've provided relevant excerpts from these resources throughout this guide, and have also included them in their entirety below for you to review.  

• ProQuest Copyright Guide The following guide by ProQuest offers guidelines for avoiding copyright infringement and introduces the kinds of materials or sources that require copyright permissions. This document also includes a sample Permission Form and instructions to follow when requesting permission from copyright owners.
• ProQuest - Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis This article by Kenneth Crews offers a more extensive overview of copyright and its significance, before discussing the fundamentals of copyright — both protecting your own and respecting others' — as they relate to your thesis. Though not required reading, Crews' article has a wealth of useful information that will strengthen your understanding of copyright as you research and write your thesis.
• Pratt Institute Academic Integrity Policy Copyright issues directly relate to Pratt's Academic Integrity Policy, as each stress the importance of crediting and acknowledging the contributions other writers, artists, and thinkers have made to your work. "Giving credit where it's due" is a central aspect of academic integrity and an essential element of your thesis.
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Thesis and Dissertation Guide

• « Thesis & Dissertation Resources
• The Graduate School Home
• Introduction
• Copyright Page
• Dedication, Acknowledgements, Preface (optional)
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Symbols
• Non-Traditional Formats
• Font Type and Size
• Spacing and Indentation
• Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
• Formatting Previously Published Work
• Internet Distribution
• Open Access

Registering Copyright

Using copyrighted materials.

• Use of Your Own Previously Published Materials
• Submission Steps
• Submission Checklist
• Sample Pages

IV. Copyrighting

A copyright is an intangible right granted to the author or originator of certain literary or artistic productions, under which they are invested for a limited period with the sole, exclusive privilege of making copies and publishing and selling them.

Copyright protection automatically exists from the time the work is created in fixed form. There is no requirement that the work be published or registered to obtain protection under copyright law. The copyright of any work immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work, unless it is a work-for-hire, or unless ownership has been assigned by written agreement.

Receipt of a submitted and approved thesis or dissertation in The Graduate School results in the publication of the document by the University Library at UNC-Chapel Hill. As such, each student grants the University a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce the student's work, in whole or in part, in electronic form to be posted in the University Library database and made available to the general public at no charge. This does not mean that UNC-Chapel Hill owns the copyright to your work (you do), but the University has the right to reproduce and distribute your work. Public universities often require students to allow reproduction and distribution of academic work to support the dissemination of intellectual thought and discovery. Please review the Copyright Policy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for additional information.

Regardless of whether or not you register copyright for your thesis or dissertation, UNC-Chapel Hill requires that you include a copyright notice following the title page. See Section I of this Guide and the sample copyright page for the format of this notice. Including this page helps to establish that you are the owner of the work. It also protects you, as the copyright holder, from anyone claiming innocent infringement or unintentional violation of copyright.

You may wish to register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. As mentioned above, copyright registration is not a condition to copyright protection. There are, however, advantages to registration, especially if you have a claim of infringement of your copyright. Registration may be made at any time within the life of the copyright, but there are advantages to filing for registration within three months of publication. For more information on registration, consult the website of the U.S. Copyright Office .

There are two main ways for you to file for copyright of your thesis or dissertation:

• You may empower ProQuest to file the application on your behalf. When you submit your thesis or dissertation, ProQuest charges a fee for this service ($55, subject to change). The service includes preparing an application in your name, submitting your application fee, depositing the required copy or copies of the manuscript, and mailing you the completed certificate of registration from the Library of Congress.
• Alternately, you may file for copyright directly. Visit the following U.S. Copyright website for more information about registering your work . There is a copyright fee for filing copyright directly with the U.S. Copyright Office ($35, subject to change).

Any copyrighted materials used in your work, beyond brief excerpts, may be used only with the written permission of the copyright owner. Book and journal publishers normally hold the copyright for all materials they publish. Therefore, even if you are the sole or one of several authors of material in a published book or journal, you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder if you are including this material in your document. Remember that use of reproductions or excerpts of other media, such as music, graphic images, or computer software may also require permissions.

Your letter to the copyright holder needs to make clear that you seek written permission to preserve (on microfilm and digitally) and publish (in print and digital form) your thesis or dissertation through ProQuest and that ProQuest may sell, on demand, for scholarly purposes, single copies of your work, which includes the copyright holder's material. Your letter must also seek written permission for the document to be submitted in electronic format to UNC-Chapel Hill where it will be placed in a database and made available through the University Library to the general public at no charge via the Internet.

You are responsible for securing all necessary permissions and paying any permission fees in advance of using copyrighted materials in your work.

Use of Your Own Previously Published Material

Some academic programs permit you to include articles or other materials that you have previously published, that have been accepted (or submitted, in press, or under review) for publication, or that have been otherwise presented to the public within the body of your thesis or dissertation. In all such instances the following guidelines apply:

• If the material is co-authored, your academic program must approve its inclusion in your thesis or dissertation.
• If the material is copyrighted (if you are the sole author but the copyright is held by the publisher), you must fulfill the conditions specified in the section above on using copyrighted materials .
• The material, if included in the body of your text, must conform to all formatting guidelines outlined in this Guide. See the Formatting Previously Published Work section for details.

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• Dissertation Copyright
• Dissertation Embargo Guidelines
• Dissertation Templates
• ETD Administrator
• Formatting FAQs
• Sample Dissertation Title Page

Copyrighting your Dissertation

In the United States, you automatically own the copyright in your original creative authorship, such as your dissertation, once it is fixed in a tangible form ( i.e. , written down or recorded). United States law does not require you to include a copyright notice on your dissertation or to  formally register  with the U.S. Copyright Office in order to secure copyright protection over your work. However, there are some benefits to including a copyright notice and registering your work. See the  Copyright Guide  for more information or to schedule a consultation.

Including a Copyright Page in your Dissertation

Including a copyright page in your dissertation is optional but recommended. For details on how to format the copyright page, consult the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Guide  and the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Checklist .

Dissertations Based on Joint Work

• For dissertations based on joint work with other researchers, a unique and separate dissertation must be presented by each degree candidate. You must include a concise account of your unique contribution to the joint work, and remainder of the dissertation must be authored solely by you. Authorship of an entire dissertation by more than one degree candidate is not allowed.

Using Your Own Previously Published Material in Your Dissertation

University of Pennsylvania  policy  allows you to include your own previously published work or articles submitted for publication as part of the dissertation with the following conditions:

• You must obtain approval of the dissertation committee and Graduate Group Chairperson.
• You must obtain written permission from the copyright owner, which may be the journal, publisher, and/or any co-authors, unless you are the sole copyright holder (depends on your publishing agreement).
• You must upload any permission letters in ETD Administrator as an  Administrative Document  titled “Permission Letter – Do Not Publish.”
• Your dissertation must be formatted as a single document with consistent formatting and styles throughout. If you are using multiple previously published articles, make sure to make the formatting consistent with the rest of the document.

When using previously published or in press work, you must disclose this information in your dissertation in the following format :

• Under the Chapter title, list the full citation for the previously published/in-press article in the citation style used in your Bibliography.
• If it is a jointly authored article, describe your contribution to the work in a separate sentence.

Using Other Copyrighted Material in Your Dissertation

If you use third party copyrighted material (images, quotations, datasets, figures), you are responsible for re-use of that material (see the  Policy on Unauthorized Copying of Copyrighted Media ). In many cases, you may be able to use copyrighted material under the “ fair use ” provision of U.S. copyright law. Consult the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Guide  and the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Checklist  for information on how to submit written permission from a copyright holder. Typically, you will need to request a permission letter and upload the letter as an  Administrative Document  in  ETD Administrator .

If you still have questions regarding copyright and “fair use” refer to the  Penn Libraries Copyright Guide  or email  [email protected]  for further support.

Patent and Intellectual Property

Any inventions that you make as part of your research for your degree and disclosed as part of your dissertation, and any patent or other intellectual property rights arising therefrom, are governed by the policies of the University of Pennsylvania, including the  Patent and Tangible Research Property Policies and Procedures  and  Policy Relating to Copyrights and Commitment of Effort for Faculty.  For more information, please contact the  Penn Center for Innovation .

There are strict deadlines under U.S. and international law regarding the timing for filing patent applications and the public availability of your dissertation. Contact the  Penn Center for Innovation  to discuss whether there might be a patentable invention disclosed in your dissertation prior to deposit of your dissertation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do i have copyright over my dissertation .

Yes. According to US Copyright law, you have copyright immediately and automatically over any of your new, original works in a “fixed, tangible form” ( i.e. , written down, recorded, etc.). You do not need to register or to include a copyright symbol © or any other formal marks to secure your copyright, though there are some benefits to doing so. See the  Copyright Guide  for more information or email  [email protected]  for further support.

Should I register the copyright in my dissertation with the U.S. Copyright Office? 

It depends on what you want to do with your dissertation. There are  some benefits to registering the copyright  in your dissertation depending on your future goals. However, keep in mind that you automatically have copyright over your dissertation without formally registering. To learn more about formally registering the copyright in your dissertation, see the  Copyright Guide  or schedule a consultation.  

Should I pay ProQuest to register my copyright?

Note that you already have copyright over your dissertation, but if you would like to  formally register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office , you can pay ProQuest to do it for you (you will have the option in ETD Administrator). For less cost, you can register it yourself on the  copyright.gov  web page. Information on registering your copyright is available in the  Copyright Guide . Please keep in mind that if portions of your dissertation are comprised of previously published co-authored material,  you cannot  register your copyright through ProQuest. 

What is a Creative Commons license?

A copyright license grants permission for someone else to use your copyrighted work.  A  Creative Commons  license is one type of copyright license. It works hand in hand with your copyright. It is not an independent type of copyright. By using a Creative Commons license you are telling the world under what circumstances they are able to use your work without asking your permission each and every time.  You can only add a Creative Commons license to your work if you are the copyright holder, and have not transferred your rights to someone else (like a publisher).

You may choose to apply a Creative Commons license to your dissertation by adding it to the copyright notice page; see the  PhD Dissertation Formatting Guide  for an example. V isit the  Creative Commons website  to review all the licenses in full detail and select one that fits your needs. 

Refer to the  Services for Authors Guide  or  schedule a consultation  to learn more about using a Creative Commons license on your dissertation.

I want to use copyrighted materials in my dissertation. Is that okay?

It depends. If the materials you wish to incorporate into your dissertation are copyrighted, you will need to do a  fair use analysis  for each item you use to determine if you can proceed without getting permission. If you do not feel that you can make a good “fair use” case, you will need to  request permission  from the copyright holder and provide all permission letters as  Administrative Documents  in ETD Administrator. Just because you are using the work for educational purposes does not automatically mean that your work is “fair use” or that you have permission to use the work.  Request a consultation  to learn more about fair use and other copyright considerations.

I want to use my own previously published materials in my dissertation. Is that okay?

It depends. If the materials you may wish to incorporate into your dissertation are published in a journal or other publication, you may need to seek permission from the journal, publisher, or any co-authors. These permission letters must be uploaded as supplementary material in ETD Administrator before the deposit date. Please refer to your publication agreement for further information.

Additionally, using previously published materials as part of your dissertation requires approval of the dissertation committee and Graduate Group Chairperson.

I would like to know more about publishing, copyright, open access, and other/related issues. How can I find out more?

The Penn Libraries offers a range of workshops and presentations on these topics (and other digital skills related topics)  throughout the year . Groups can request a number of these workshops for classes or other group settings. For personal discussions about copyright, fair use, Creative Commons, scholarly publishing, and other related topics, please  contact your subject librarian  for support and further referrals. For more general information about these and related topics, review the  Penn Libraries’ guides  by keyword or subject.

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Copyright & your thesis.

This guide includes basic information related to copyright and your thesis.

The content in this guide has been adapted (with permission) from the  Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of British Columbia .

Copyright ownership

Electronic theses are subject to the same copyright protection as paper documents. Students hold copyright to their theses regardless of the method of submission. For more information, see  What are Queen's University's policies regarding ownership of Intellectual Property?  in the Schools of Graduate Studies Intellectual Property Guidelines.

Publishing your thesis elsewhere

You own the copyright to your thesis as a whole and are free to publish your thesis if you wish. If your thesis includes copyrighted works like figures, tables, etc. the publisher may request that you get permission to publish.

You should be aware that many former students in North America are contacted by publishing companies which search the Internet for theses. The companies then contact writers expressing specific interest in his or her thesis, and offer to publish it. You are free to do this if you wish, but you should research the company first to ensure that it is a reputable academic publisher. There are usually discussions between former students online which can give you an insight into the value of publishing with a particular company.

Use of copyrighted material

According to Library and Archives Canada, “students should ensure that the use of copyrighted materials from other sources in their theses meet the requirements of the Copyright Act. Some written permission may be required” ( Thesis Canada ).

When you submit the final copy of your thesis, you must sign the Queen’s Thesis Licence Agreement confirming that if you have copyrighted material in your thesis, it either complies with the "fair dealing" provisions of the Copyright Act, or you have obtained permission to use it.

Please retain the original permission forms or letters for your records in case of a challenge.

So, what are those “requirements” that you may have to worry about for your thesis?

Copyright is an area of intellectual property law that protects forms of creative expression. It gives creators and owners of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the exclusive right to “reproduce the work … in any material form whatever” ( Copyright Act,  s. 3). Creators and owners also get the right to distribute, translate, and adapt their work and to authorize any of the rights listed previously.

Copyright protection applies regardless of whether the work in question is published (such as a book or an annual report) or not (such as an internal company memo), and whether someone has made it available to the public (such as on a website) or not. This protection expires 70 years after the death of the originator, regardless of who holds copyright at that time.

This means that, if your thesis includes someone else’s work (e.g. figures, graphs, photos, images, art work etc.), you will have to abide by the requirements of the Copyright Act in order to use these works.

When is permission not required?

Copyright does not cover everything. The copyright act lists a number of limitations and exceptions to copyright that may apply to the works you are using in your thesis or project.  

The Copyright Compliance and Administration Policy outlines a number of situations where it is lawful to copy copyrighted works without permission or payment.

• Material in which Copyright does not Subsist  – Copyright does not protect facts and ideas.
• Material in the Public Domain  - Works in which the term of copyright has expired can be copied without permission or payment.  This means the works of creators who have been dead for more than 70 years, no matter where they resided or published their work.
• Insubstantial Portions  – Copying an insubstantial amount of a work is not a violation of the Copyright Act and does not trigger the requirement of permission or payment.  What will constitute a substantial part of a work is assessed from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. Regardless of the quantity of the work copied, if that part is distinctive, valuable or an essential part of the work, the copying will infringe the owner’s copyright. Examples of insubstantial use include selected sentences, paragraphs, verses or choruses from an article, book, poem or song .
• Works with Implicit or Explicit Consent to Copy  – Material specifically presented for public use – including Open Access publications, works placed in Institutional Repositories and works covered by Creative Commons Licenses – may typically be copied with minimal restrictions.  When copying material posted on the Internet, a user should check what use rights the copyright owner permits.

The fair dealing exception

Exceptions are situations where copyrighted works can be reproduced without getting permission or providing compensation to a copyright holder. The most relevant exception for writing your thesis is called  Fair Dealing  ( s. 29 ), which would allow you to copy works for use in your thesis as long as the copying is  fair  and is  for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review or news reporting.  For the last three categories, you must mention the source of the image and the name of the author, performer, maker or broadcaster.

Note:  It is good academic practice to cite sources, but such citing does not remove the obligation to obtain formal permission to use copyrighted material that is not covered under "fair dealing".

While copyright law in Canada does not include specific criteria for determining  fairness ,  the  CCH v. Law Society of Upper Canada   Supreme Court decision set out a number of criteria that represent the most authoritative test available in Canada. 

These criteria are:

• The Purpose of the Dealing
• The Character of the Dealing
• The Amount of the Dealing
• Alternatives to the Dealing
• The Nature of the Work
• The Effect of the Dealing on the Work

To learn more about fair dealing and to do a fair dealing evaluation, try our  f air dealing evaluator (BETA) . Using this tool, you can learn how to apply these six criteria to determine “fairness” when dealing with copyrighted materials.  You can also generate a time-stamped PDF for your records.

What if fair dealing does not apply in my situation?

Permission is required when the material you are using in your thesis:

• constitutes a substantial portion of a copyrighted work, and;
• would not fall within fair dealing.

Permission is always necessary if you are including full articles that have been published elsewhere (i.e. a manuscript style thesis). Please use the  Permission of Co-Authors  from to get permission and signatures from your co-authors and publishers. 

Getting permission

If you are not certain that your use of copyrighted material is covered under fair dealing, Ask Us . We can help you do a fair dealing analysis and/or help obtain written permission from copyright holders in order to use their work in your thesis. In most cases, this is willingly given; however, obtaining letters or completed forms may take a long time. Send out your requests for permission as early as possible.

Permission from co-authors is always necessary if you are including full articles that have been published elsewhere (i.e. a manuscript style thesis). Please use the Permission of Co-Authors from to get permission and signatures from your co-authors. In most cases, publishers will allow for journal articles and book chapters to be included in manuscript style theses without additional permissions. Check your publication agreements, the author rights section of the publisher site or the  SHERPA RoMEO  website for more information about what your publisher allows.

Note: Your thesis must be as complete as possible. Removal of material is only acceptable if you are not able to obtain permission after you have made reasonable attempts to do so, or if a fee will be charged for use of the material.

Best protection against accusations of copyright violation

For your best protection against accusations of copyright violation, you should request either:

• an original signed letter on the copyright holder's letterhead.

For manuscript style theses, use the Permission of Co-Authors form to get permission and signatures from your co-authors and publishers. 

Permission from a website

Many journal websites include statements of permission for author's material to be used in a thesis. In such cases, you should make a copy of the agreement or print out the web page and keep the printout for your records.

Keeping proof of permission

You should keep copies of all letters and forms granting you permission to use copyrighted material. Please do not include permissions in your thesis.

How to Obtain Permission

From journals.

Check the journal's website, if there is one. It may provide one or more of the following:

• Advance permission for specific uses.
• Advance permission to journal authors who have signed over copyright
• Information on how to request permission
• Information on uses that are specifically prohibited

SHERPA and Eprints both maintain online databases where you can look up journals and find their policies on use of your published papers in a thesis.

If permission to use copyrighted material in a thesis is given on a website, print out the web page that states this and keep it with your records.

Contact the Copyright Holder

Include the following information in your request.

Introduce yourself clearly

Tell the copyright holder that you are a graduate student preparing a thesis or dissertation for submission as part of the requirements for your degree at Queen's.

Identify the work you are seeking permission to use

Give standard reference information for the work, including figure/table number, if any, and page numbers. You can briefly describe the context in which you propose to use the work in your thesis.

Tell the copyright holder:

• that your thesis will be available in the Queen's Library's electronic collection and will be available online to the public, and
• that you will be granting non-exclusive licences listed on  Queen's Thesis Deposit License  page. Send the copyright holder copies of these licence agreements.

Ask for specific action

• Request a reply by a given date.
• Offer to send the copyright holder a copy of your completed work.
• Keep copies of request letters and all correspondence.
• Keep emails.

If you are requesting permission, the process can take some time, so we recommend starting early.  If you do plan on publishing your work in more than one place (eg. in a journal   and in QSpace), permission will likely be required for all works that you use.

The following tips and tools can help you get permission:

• Rightslink  is a tool that easily allows you to request permission for re-publication. In cases where they cannot give permission, they also often list the contact information for the rightsholder.
• Many publisher websites will include information about how to request permission (e.g., Oxford Journals ).  You can also look up individual publisher policies on the SHERPA RoMEO website.
• Proquest and Kenneth Crews have put together a guide that includes  a sample permissions letter  that you can use and modify for requesting permission. 

If permission is denied and you do not have a strong argument for fair dealing, we recommend removing the work and replacing it with a description, a full citation, the location of the source, and an explanation that the source has been removed due to copyright restrictions.

Citing sources

You must include full citations for any copyrighted material you have in your thesis regardless of source, including photos, pictures, charts, graphs and tables.

Each citation must include the copyright symbol, name of the copyright holder (who may or may not be the author), and, if applicable, a statement that the use of the material or adaptation (in the case of adapted graphics) is by permission of the copyright holder.

Journal of XYZ, 2009, by permission. Journal of XYZ, 2009, adapted by permission. (For adapted graphics.) Sometimes copyright holders will ask you to use a specific wording in your citation. If so, it's important to follow their instructions exactly, word for word.

Unable to get permission?

When your use of copyrighted material is not covered under "fair dealing" and you are unable to obtain permission or there is a charge for obtaining permission that you are unwilling to pay, you can remove the copyrighted material and leave a blank space.

Note: Your thesis must be as complete as possible. Removal of material is only acceptable if you are denied permission, if a fee will be charged for use of the material, or if you receive no response from the copyright holder after making a reasonable effort at contact.

This space must contain the following:

• A statement that the material has been removed because of copyright restrictions
• A description of the material and the information it contained
• A full citation of the original source of the material

Example: Figure 3 has been removed due to copyright restrictions. It was a diagram of the apparatus used in performing the experiment, showing the changes made by the investigating team. Original source: Wu, G. and Thompson, J.R. (2008) Effect of Ketone Bodies on Dairy Cattle. Biochem J. 255:139-144.

The brief description of the figure removed is important as it gives the reader a chance to follow the thesis argument without needing to look up the actual figures. If possible, including a link to an online source is very useful.

For help locating resources, using the library, or to request a research consultation, try our Ask Us service.

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In most cases the ownership of copyright in your thesis rests with you, the author. Copyright protection comes into effect automatically at the creation and noting down of a work. Although there is no requirement to register copyright in your dissertation to protect it, it is advisable to have your dissertation prominently carry a standard copyright notice, e.g. Copyright © 2018 Author.

In the following exceptions, copyright in the thesis could be owned by someone other than the author:

(a)  Where a student is sponsored by a third party, a condition of sponsorship may be that the sponsor may own any intellectual property developed during the period of sponsorship. Sponsored students are, therefore, advised to check the terms of their sponsorship agreement.

(b)  Where a student is working on a sponsored project as part of his or her coursework or research, the sponsor may own any intellectual property that the student develops. This will be specified in the research contract and the supervisor or Department should inform students if this is the case as early as possible in the admissions process and in any case prior to the start of their research.

(c) Where a student is working in collaboration with others in a manner that gives rise to joint creation of intellectual property, or interdependent intellectual property, the student may be required to assign intellectual property to the University or place the results in the public domain without restriction. He or she will be treated in the same way as University staff under these regulations. If this case is likely to arise, students should be so informed at the offer of admission where practical, and in any case prior to the start of their research.

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Copyright and Your Thesis or Dissertation

Using copyrighted materials, using your own previously published material, registering copyright.

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A copyright is an intangible right granted to you as the author of your thesis or dissertation. You have the sole and exclusive privilege of making copies, publishing or selling your thesis or dissertation. Currently, this protection lasts for your lifetime plus an addition 70 years. These exclusive privileges belong to you unless you have transferred them to someone else via a written agreement or your work is a “work-for-hire.”

Copyright protection automatically exists from the time you place your thesis or dissertation in fixed form. A fixed form can be a digital file such as a word processing document, PDF file, or a printed page. There is no requirement to publish or register your thesis or dissertation to obtain protection under copyright law. The copyright of any work immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work, unless as stated above it is a work-for-hire, or unless ownership has been assigned by written agreement.

Submission of your approved thesis or dissertation results in the publication of the document by Curtis Laws Wilson Library. As such, you grant the University a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce your thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, in electronic form to be posted in Scholars' Mine, our institutional repository, and made available to the general public at no charge. This does not mean that the University owns the copyright to your work (you do), but the University has the right to reproduce and distribute your work. The University requires this to support the dissemination of intellectual thought and discovery.

Regardless of whether or not you register copyright for your thesis or dissertation, you should include a copyright notice in your thesis or dissertation. Including the notice helps to establish that you are the owner of the work. It also protects you, as the copyright holder, from anyone claiming innocent infringement or unintentional violation of copyright.

Any materials belonging to someone else used in your thesis or dissertation, beyond brief excerpts, may be used only with the written permission of the copyright owner. Publishers of books and journals hold the copyright for all materials they publish. Therefore, even if you are the sole or one of several authors of material in a published book or journal, you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder if you are including this material in your document. Also the use of reproductions or excerpts of other media, such as music, graphic images, or computer software will also require permissions.

Your letter to the copyright holder needs to make clear that you seek written permission to preserve (on microfilm and digitally) and publish (in print and digital form) your thesis or dissertation through ProQuest and that ProQuest may sell, on demand, for scholarly purposes, single copies of your work, which includes the copyright holder's material. Your letter must also seek written permission for the document to be submitted in electronic format to Curtis Laws Wilson Library where it will be placed in our institutional repository, Scholars' Mine, and made available at no charge to the general public  via the Internet.

You are responsible for securing all necessary permissions and paying any permission fees in advance of using copyrighted materials in your work. It is recommended that copies of the written permission you receive be placed in the appendix of your thesis or dissertation.

Some academic programs here at Missouri S&T permit you to include articles or other materials that you have previously published, that have been accepted (or submitted, in press, or under review) for publication, or that have been otherwise presented to the public within the body of your thesis or dissertation. This is referred to as the "Publication Option." In all such instances the following guidelines apply:

• If the material is co-authored, your thesis or dissertation advisor must approve its inclusion in your thesis or dissertation.

If the material is copyrighted (if you are the sole author but the copyright is held by the publisher), you must fulfill the conditions specified above on using copyrighted materials. If you are unsure of the copyright status you should review the copyright transfer agreement you signed with the publisher and  consult with the Scholarly Communications Librarian.   The material, if included in the body of your text, must conform to all formatting guidelines.

You can register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. As mentioned above, copyright registration is not a condition for copyright protection. However, there are advantages to registration if you have a claim of infringement of your copyright. You can register at any time within the life of the copyright, but there are advantages to filing for registration within three months of publication. For more information on registration, consult the website of the U.S. Copyright Office or contact the Scholarly Communications Librarian.

There are two main ways for you to register your copyright:

• You may request ProQuest to file the application for you when you submit your thesis or dissertation. ProQuest charges a fee for this service. The service includes preparing an application in your name, submitting your application fee, depositing the required copy or copies of the manuscript, and mailing you the completed certificate of registration from the Library of Congress.  
• Alternately, you can register your copyright directly at the U.S. Copyright website. There is also a copyright fee for filing copyright directly with the U.S. Copyright Office.
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• Managing copyright in your thesis
• Requesting permission
• Incorporating publications into your thesis
• Depositing your thesis in UNSWorks

UNSW students generally own copyright in their own works, including UNSW postgraduate students’ research theses.  There are exceptions to these rules, and they can be found in the UNSW intellectual property policy

When researching and writing your thesis, you may include third party copyright material such as quotes, tables, photographs, illustrations or diagrams. When using third party copyright material, you must ensure that you comply with copyright law. Under the fair dealing provision for research or study , within the Copyright Act, a reasonable portion of third party copyright material can be used in the version of your thesis submitted for examination. 

If third party copyright materials are reproduced in the public version of your thesis, you generally need permission from the copyright owner.  This permission is in addition to the normal academic practice of citing resources. 

UNSW requires a digital copy of theses to be deposited into the University's open access repository, UNSWorks. As part of the depositing process, you must declare that you obtained permission from any third party copyright materials within your thesis. More information about thesis submission can be found at Graduate Research . 

For this reason, it is important for students to carefully consider what third party copyright material they include in their thesis and allow time to obtain permission from copyright owners, if required.

For more information about thesis examination processes for all higher degree research programs at UNSW, see Thesis examination procedure .

Generally, substantial third party copyright material may be included without copyright owner's permission if:

• Copyright has expired
• A fair dealing exception covers the use 
• An insubstantial portion is used
• The material has a licence to allow for re-use

When researching and writing a thesis, it is likely that third party copyright material is used. 

Generally, research students can rely on the fair dealing for research or study when using copyright materials in the version of their thesis they turn in for examination as part of their degree program.  

Deciding whether a use is ‘fair’ is determined largely by how much of the work has been copied. 

A reasonable portion is generally considered to be:

• 10% or one chapter if the work is a published edition of 10 pages or more
• 10% of the words if the work is electronic
• one article in a single edition of a periodical publication (a journal or newspaper)
• more than one article in a single edition of a periodical publication if the same subject matter

Artistic works, unpublished material, films, and sound recordings do not have the same 10% provision. To be able to use these types of materials, you need to consider whether the use is fair and reasonable.    It is generally considered ‘reasonable’ under the fair dealing for research or study to reproduce a whole of an ‘artistic works’ (including maps, diagrams, graphs, etc.) that accompany and illustrate/explain a text for research or study purposes. If including a substantial amount of material that has been sourced from e-books or e-journals provided by the Library, best practice is to check the licence terms of these resources and request permission to include these resources in both your thesis for examination as well as the public version of your thesis. 

Copyright in the public version of your thesis

While the fair dealing for research or study allows for the use of copyright materials in the version submitted for examination, the research or study exception does not cover the use of copyright materials in the public version submitted to UNSWorks (UNSW’s institutional repository). If copyright materials are reproduced and communicated in the public version of their thesis, permission is generally required, unless an exception or licence applies. 

When can copyright material be used without seeking permission?

There are some circumstances where other people’s material can be used without permission. These include:

• when the copyright has expired or the copyright owner has waived their rights (Public Domain) 
• when a fair dealing exception covers the use 
• the amount used is insubstantial (i.e. brief quote / extract from a publication). See,  Quoting materials  
• materials with a Creative Commons licence attached
• materials copied from a website where the terms and conditions allow re-use for your intended purposes
• library subscribed resources where the publisher allows for the copyright material to be included in the public version of your thesis 

When using other people’s copyright material, remember to attribute the work and abide by any terms attached to licences.

What copyright materials requires permission for reuse?

Permission is generally required if a substantial portion of the third party material has been used.  Whether a portion is considered substantial or not is judged on both a qualitative and quantitative basis.

Examples of the type of materials that require permission for the public version of your thesis are as follows:

If the use of copyright material does not fall in one of the categories mentioned above, then student would either need to seek permission or redact the copyright material from the public facing version of their thesis that is deposited into UNSWorks. Find out more about requesting permission here .  

When writing your thesis, it is important to start the process of obtaining permission as soon as possible as it can take some time to gain the necessary permissions.  There are a number of ways to approach seeking permission:

• Use Rightslink for permissions for the use  images in books/journals; journal articles and book chapters Many commercial publishers direct permission requests to the Copyright Clearance Centre – RightsLink service.  It important that when requesting permission that the intended use is to post the thesis in an open institutional repository.
• If you are unable to gain permission via RightsLink then you need to locate the copyright owner/s. A guide to locating the copyright owner can be found on the Australia Copyright Council Information Sheet: Permission How to Get It
• If the copyright owner is a publisher, then they normally would have a ‘request copyright permission’ type link on their website. 

To request permission from a copyright owner you should: 

• check to see if the publisher has an online permission form on their website 
• if the publisher does not have a form, this Copyright permission request template  can be used as a guide to request permission
• include a detailed description of material to be used and the amount of the material you wish to use 
• state clearly that you are seeking permission to use the work for non-commercial purposes and that a copy of your thesis will be made publicly available online in UNSWorks (UNSW’s institutional repository).
• be conscious that the copyright owner has the right to say no 
• be aware that a copyright owner may charge a fee or ask you to sign a licence agreement 

Remember to allow plenty of time, as it may take months for the permission to be granted.  

It also important to retain copies of permissions you have received. Copyright permission granted by publishers and copyright owners can be included in the master copy of your thesis that is submitted to the Library, however they should be removed from the public version. Refer to Depositing Your Thesis for more information. 

Removing third party copyright material from the public version of your thesis

If it is not possible to obtain permission for the reuse of certain copyright material in the public facing version of a thesis, then those material should be removed. In the place of the redacted materials, you may include a short statement such as:

• “Figure (Text/Chart/Diagram etc.) has been removed due to copyright restrictions”. 
• “Content can be access via [insert name of publication, URL etc.]”  

If you plan to incorporate your own research publications into your research, it may be possible if the research and its publication occurred during the candidature of your degree. You will need the necessary permission from the publishers and any co-authors, and if you are using a publication/s in lieu of a chapter/s in your thesis, approval from your primary supervisor and School Postgraduate Research Coordinator is also required. Some faculties may also have discipline-specific guidelines that should be consulted. 

For more information about incorporating publications into your thesis, see Thesis Examination Procedure  and the UNSW Thesis Format Guide .

Publisher agreements often assign the publisher all rights to the work, although each publisher's policy differs. If you plan to incorporate articles in your thesis, the terms can be negotiated with the publisher prior to signing the agreement. For more information, see Publishing your research . 

If you haven’t negotiated rights prior to publication and need to request permission from the publisher:

• check to see if the publisher has an online permission form on their website
• if the publisher does not have a form, this  UNSW copyright permission template  can be used to request permission
• tell them the amount of the work you wish to use (e.g. the whole work or a part/section)
• state clearly that you are seeking permission to use the work for non-commercial purposes
• consider asking permission for future use of the material (e.g. conference presentations)
• be conscious that the copyright owner has the right to say no
• be aware that a copyright owner may charge a fee or ask you to sign a licence agreement
• allow plenty of time, as it may take months for the permission to be granted

UNSWorks is the UNSW Open Access institutional repository which enables UNSW researchers to make their research outputs freely available and accessible. 

In accordance with UNSW’s Open Access Policy, when depositing your thesis into UNSWorks, you grant UNSW a licence to make the thesis freely available online under a Creative Commons licence. 

As of 1 December 2021, all deposited theses will have a Creative Commons Attribution ( CC BY ) licence applied. This licence allows users to copy, share and adapt the material provided appropriate attribution is given to the creator. The licence also allows for commercial use.

Theses submitted prior to 1 Dec 2021, will have a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence ( CC BY-NC-ND ).

As the creator of the work, you retain copyright in the thesis as well as the right to use the thesis in future works (i.e. future articles, books, conference presentations).

As part of the depositing process, you must declare that you have obtained permission for any third party copyright materials within your thesis. If you have been unable to obtain permission, the third party copyright material must be removed from the public version of your thesis.

Find out more about requesting permissions for third party copyright materials within your thesis. 

UNSW staff and students can contact [email protected] for assistance with a copyright query or to arrange a copyright information session.

Related resources

Depositing your thesis

Copyright log (257KB DOCX)

Australian Copyright Council Information Sheet: Permission: How to Get It

• Last Updated: Jun 25, 2024 10:34 AM

University Library

Copyright for Graduate Students: Theses and Dissertations

• Public Domain
• Creative Commons Licensing
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• International Materials
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• Depositing Your Dissertation/Thesis in IDEALS

Copyright Questions?

Copyright law can be difficult and confusing. This webpage is meant to provide you with guidance, but not legal advice.

Should you have further questions, please do not hesitate to ask Sara Benson, the Copyright Librarian, for assistance. Sara can be reached at 217-333-4200 or [email protected]

Scholarly Communication and Publishing

The Fine Print

Copyright law is complicated. This guide is intended to provide you with some guidance on how to refer library users to accurate information. However, this guide is not intended to provide legal advice to you or library users nor should you attempt to provide legal advice to library users.

And, of course, when in doubt, please refer library users to the Copyright Librarian, Sara Benson, at  srbenson @illinois.edu

Dual Copyright Aspects of Theses & Dissertations

When writing a thesis or a dissertation, you have two sets of copyrights you should bear in mind.

• Your own copyright as author of the thesis or dissertation; and
• The copyright owned by others in the material you incorporate into your thesis or dissertation.

This guide will discuss both issues.

Generally, when using others' work, you will either determine that you do not need to obtain written permission to use the work in your thesis or dissertation (either because the work is no longer copyright protected/in the public domain or because you have determined that your use constitutes a fair use) or that you do need to obtain permission from the copyright owner (often the publisher and not the author of the work) to use the work.

You may need to consider copyright agreements concerning your own previously published work as well, as you may have transferred copyright to a journal or publisher. In that instance, you may need to obtain permission to use your own work in your thesis or dissertation.

Finally, you should consider how you want to designate your work here at Illinois. Do you want to make the work as open as possible and deposit it both with the institutional repository (IDEALS) and Proques t? Do you want to embargo your work as you plan to publish it immediately? Do you want to make it available so as to find a publisher? These are decisions you will need to make when you deposit your work with the University and this guide can help you when making those decisions.

• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis [pdf] Kenneth D. Crews offers a complete guide on how copyright affects your thesis.

Using Your Own Previously Published Work

For your own previously published works, first read the fine print in the publishing agreement. Do you have the right to re-use your own work or did you transfer your copyright to the publisher? If you transferred your copyright, you may need to ask for permission to use your own previously published work! Sound crazy? Well, that's why many publishing agreements today expressly permit scholars to use their own work (even if published) for research and teaching. But, again, read the fine print. 

And, if you are planning to publish parts of your dissertation before you file your paper with the Graduate College, but you have not signed a copyright agreement or publishing agreement just yet, be sure to keep copyright in mind when negotiating with the publisher! Consider asking the publisher to let you add the SPARC Author's Addendum to your agreement. 

What if you no longer have a copy of your publishing agreement? Don't worry, your publisher most certainly has a copy. Just send them a friendly e-mail and ask them if they will send you a copy.  

• SPARC Author Addendum The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that you can use to modify your copyright transfer agreements with non-open access journal publishers. It allows you to select which individual rights out of the bundle of copyrights you want to keep, such as distributing copies in the course of teaching and research, posting the article on a personal or institutional Web site, or creating derivative works.

Fair Use or Seeking Permission: That is the Question

When using other scholars' work in your dissertation (or even your own work, for that matter) the question arises: do I need to ask for permission to use the work in my writing?

There are generally no truly simple answers to that question, except maybe for quotations. You may generally quote a small portion of another scholar's published work without seeking their permission to do so--this is a classic example of fair use.

When using the work of others, consider the following:

• Is it in the public domain ? If so, no permission is needed to use the work.
• Is it a work produced by the federal government in the course of their duties as government officials ? If so, no permission is needed.
• Is the work licensed with a creative commons license ? If so, no permission is needed to use the work, but you will need to carefully consider the terms of the license and comply with those terms to legally use the work.
• Is your use of the work a fair use ? If so, no permission is needed to use the work, but you should conduct a fair use analysis for each and every source you consider to be a fair use.
• If you've answered no to all of the above questions, then yes, you should seek written permission to use the work in your thesis or dissertation.

Except where otherwise indicated, original content in this guide is licensed under a   Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license . You are free to share, adopt, or adapt the materials. We encourage broad adoption of these materials for teaching and other professional development purposes, and invite you to customize them for your own needs.

• Next: Copyright Basics >>
• Last Updated: May 8, 2024 3:09 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/copyrightforgradstudents

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="copyright in thesis"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Fair use, copyright, patent, and publishing options.

• Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?
• Embargo of online copies
• Creative Commons license
• Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?
• Register for copyright?
• Supplementary materials
• Make your work discoverable on search engines?
• Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

1. Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?

You are responsible for acknowledging any facts, ideas, or materials of others that you include in your work. You must follow the guidelines for acknowledging the work of others in the “Code of Academic Integrity and Acknowledging the Work of Others” (published in the Policy Notebook for the Cornell Community ) .

If you use any copyrighted material in the dissertation or thesis, it is your responsibility to give full credit to the author and publisher of work quoted. The acknowledgment should be placed in a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the paper or chapter. Additionally, you must determine whether use of the material can be classified as a “fair use” by performing an analysis of your use of each copyrighted item. The Cornell Copyright Information Center’s Fair Use Checklist ) is a helpful tool for performing this analysis. (See also, Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities , published by ProQuest, or The Chicago Manual of Style , published by the University of Chicago Press.)

If your use of material is not considered a “fair use,” you must obtain written permission from the copyright owner. Two copies of each permission letter must be submitted with the dissertation or thesis. ProQuest has specific requirements for the content of the permission letter. For these guidelines, consult the ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Agreement form (published by ProQuest).

If you have already published or had accepted for publication part of your own dissertation or thesis material in a journal, depending on the terms of your publication agreement, it may be necessary to write to that journal and obtain written authorization to use the material in your dissertation.

2. Embargo of online copies

The value of your dissertation extends well beyond your graduation requirements. It’s important that you make an informed decision about providing online access, via ProQuest and eCommons, to your work. This decision can expand the visibility and impact of your work, but it can also shape the options available to you for publishing subsequent works based on your dissertation.

ProQuest’s ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database indexes almost all dissertations published in the U.S. and provides subscription access online to the full text of more recent dissertations. ProQuest also sells print copies of dissertations, paying royalties to authors, when they exceed a minimum threshold. Authors retain copyright in the works they submit to ProQuest.

eCommons is a service of the Cornell University Library that provides long-term, online access to Cornell-related content of enduring value. Electronic theses and dissertations deposited in eCommons, unless subject to embargo, are freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. When submitting to eCommons, you retain copyright in your work. Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses submitted to ProQuest are automatically submitted to eCommons, subject to the same embargo you select for ProQuest.

Electronic copies of dissertations in PQDT or eCommons may be made accessible immediately upon submission or after an embargo period of six months, one year, or two years. You may wish to consider an embargo period which helps address publishers’ interests in being the first to publish scholarly books or articles, while also ensuring that scholarship is accessible to the general public within a reasonable period of time. Your decision should be made in consultation with your special committee.

3. Creative Commons license

Creative Commons licenses provide authors with a straightforward and standardized means of prospectively granting certain permissions to potential users of the author’s material. Authors may request proper attribution, permit copying and the creation of derivative works, request that others share derivative works under the same terms, and allow or disallow commercial uses. Authors may even choose to place their works directly into the public domain. You will have the option of selecting a Creative Commons license when you upload your dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, and your choice will automatically be applied to the copy of your work in eCommons.

4. Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?

Cornell University Policy 1.5 governs inventions and related property rights. Inventions made by faculty, staff, and students must be disclosed to the Center for Technology Licensing at Cornell University (CTL). Theses and dissertations describing patentable research should be withheld from publication, in order to avoid premature public disclosure.

Use the delayed release (embargo) option if a patent application is or will be in process, noting the reason for the delay as “patent pending.” If you have any questions, please contact Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing at 607-254-4698 or [email protected] .

5. Register for copyright?

Copyright law involves many complex issues that are relevant to you as a graduate student, both in protecting your own work and in referencing the work of others. Discussion of copyright in this publication is not meant to substitute for the legal advice of qualified attorneys. A more detailed discussion of copyright law can be found in the publication from ProQuest entitled Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities by Kenneth D. Crews.

Copyright protection automatically exists from the time the work is created in fixed form and the copyright immediately becomes the property of the author. Registration with the United States Copyright Office is not required to secure copyright; rather it is a legal formality to place on public record the basic facts of a particular copyright. Although not a condition of copyright protection itself, registering the copyright is ordinarily necessary before any infringement suits can be filed in court.

To register a copyright for your dissertation or thesis, register online or download printable forms . You may also request forms by mail from the Information Section, U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559, or contact them by telephone at 202-707-3000.

Doctoral candidates: You may authorize ProQuest to file, on your behalf, an application for copyright registration. This option will be presented to you as part of the submission process.

6. Supplementary materials

If supplementary materials (audio, video, datasets, etc., up to 2GB per file) are part of your thesis or dissertation, you may submit them as supplementary files during the online submission process. For help selecting long-lived file formats, note ProQuest’s guidance in their document, “Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (Including Supplemental Files).” File formats for which ProQuest does not guarantee migration may still have a high likelihood of preservation in Cornell’s digital repository; please see the eCommons help page for further guidance.

Do not embed media files in the PDF version of your thesis or dissertation, as this can significantly increase the size of the file and make it difficult to download and access. Include a description of each supplementary file in the abstract of your thesis or dissertation. You may include an additional supplementary file containing more detailed information about the supplementary materials as a “readme” file or other form of documentation; this is particularly advisable for data sets or code. The Research Data Management Service Group ( [email protected] ) offers assistance in preparing and documenting data sets for online distribution.

7. Make your work discoverable on search engines?

ProQuest offers authors the option of making their graduate work discoverable through major search engines including Yahoo, Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. If you chose the Search Engine option on their dissertation “paper” publishing agreement or within ProQuest’s PROQUEST ETD Administrator (electronic submission service), you can expect to have your work appear in the major search engines.

If you change your mind and do not want your work to be made available through search engines, you can contact customer service at [email protected] or 800-521-0600 ext. 77020. In addition, if you did not initially adopt this option but now want your works made available through this service, contact the customer service group to change your selection.

Please note that search engines index content in eCommons, regardless of the choice you make for ProQuest.

8. Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

When creating a PDF version of your thesis or dissertation it is important to keep in mind that readers may use assistive technology such as screen readers to access your document.  Follow best practices to ensure that your thesis or dissertation is accessible to everyone.  These resources may be helpful:

• Cornell CIT’s guidance for creating accessible PDFs
• Checking accessibility using Acrobat Pro
• Embedding alternative text for images in Word
• Save a Word doc as an accessible PDF

MIT Libraries logo MIT Libraries

Theses & copyright

Fair use and your thesis

There are two key questions to consider when determining whether you can reuse a figure, table, image, or other content in your thesis without obtaining permission from the copyright holder:

• Is the figure copyrighted? For the most part the answer to this will be yes (see Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States ). Generally, once the content was put in tangible form, and unless it was created prior to 1923 or is a US government publication, it is copyrighted.
• Would your reuse be considered fair use ?

MIT license agreements may allow reuse

You may not need to rely on fair use to use others’ work in your thesis. The MIT Libraries’ has license agreements with Elsevier, Sage, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley that allow authors to reuse figures without asking permission or paying any fee.

Find more information about using figures and other content from published works.

Obtaining permission for use

If you determine that you should seek permission to reuse someone’s work, here are some places to go:

• In general, MIT owns the copyright in MIT theses. If you want to reuse parts of a student’s (or your own) MIT thesis, contact [email protected] .
• If you want to reuse a portion of a book or article, an efficient place to begin is the Copyright Clearance Center.
• If you are seeking permission to reuse content from formats other than a book or article (e.g. music, plays, images, or film) consult the University of Texas Getting Permission page .

Using your own published articles in your thesis, or publishing articles from it

Journal publishers usually control copyright to scholarly articles. This  theses and article publishing page shows publisher policies related to reuse of previously published articles in theses, and policies on accepting journal submissions on work that first appeared in a thesis.

Specifications for Thesis Preparation

This guide includes information on submission dates, fees, formatting, and copyright.

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Copyright and your Thesis

Copyright statement.

Any reuse of copyrighted materials within your thesis or dissertation must be accompanied by written permission by the copyright holder.

Use of Previously Published Works in a Thesis or Dissertation

The Graduate School grants students permission to use their previously published works in their thesis or dissertation using an article-based thesis structure (see Thesis & Dissertation Structures and Formatting ). If you plan to include previously published works into your thesis, you should gain approval at the departmental level. Your advisor is aware of departmental thesis structure requirements.

During the submission process to an academic journal, you may have transferred the copyright of your work to the publisher. You must obtain written permission from the copyright holder if you are including your previously owned work in your thesis. You, the author, will be responsible for securing all permissions and pay any fees associated with obtaining these permissions to reuse your work. You will need to upload these permission letters as Copyright Permissions when you upload your thesis to HammerRR.

All reused publications will need to be formatted to conform to University requirements. All previously published works and works submitted for review shall warrant an acknowledgment in your thesis document. Many publishers require a specific statement which you should place three (3) single spaces below the title of the chapter.

Copyright and Fair Use

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• Managing copyright material in your thesis

Making your thesis available in the research portal

At Bond all Doctoral theses are uploaded into the University's Research Portal which is an Open Access repository.

As an original work you own the copyright in your thesis and data, but if you include any work created by another person this must be cleared before upload into the Research Portal.  

To ensure that your thesis is 'Open Access' copyright compliant, you must check the following:

• you have permission in writing from the copyright owner, or have a publisher's permission licence, to use any copyrighted material created by others in your thesis.
• you have a publisher's agreement, or copyright permission, allowing you to reproduce a portion or the whole Accepted version of your own published article in your thesis.

You do not need permission to use:

• an insubstantial portion of a work, for example short quotes from a book or a journal article
• work that carries a Creative Commons licence  (but you should state the licence)
• works where the copyright has expired. When the copyright has expired, the work is considered in the Public Domain and can be used without the copyright owner's permission.

Copyright for researchers toolkit

Using the  Copyright for Researchers Toolkit  is essential to keep track of any third party copyright material in your work, or if you are planning to produce a thesis by publication.  

Download the Toolkit and Copyright Log Template in excel format (available below)   to record and track copyright permission requests and licences during your research. The Tootlit contains a sample permission letter, as well as easy-to-read information on gaining copyright permissions for higher degree research students.

• Copyright for Researchers Toolkit A downloadable toolkit for researchers including a sample permissions letter, checklist and simple-to-read information about copyright.
• Copyright Log Template Excel format

Using copyright material created by others

Management of copyright material is an important element of your thesis journey. 

Careful management of other peoples' work, also known as third-party materials, when writing your thesis will ensure an uncomplicated submission. If copyright material that does not belong to you is included in a thesis, e.g., images, tables, graphs, charts, or a survey template, then you must obtain permission from the copyright owner/publisher to include the reproduced material.  Copyright permission is also required if you want to adapt or modify a copyrighted work, e.g., a diagram in a published article or website.

Gaining Permissions or a Publisher Licence

Permission for the reproduction of copyright works, e.g., diagrams, photographs, maps, and tables, can take different routes. 

Website content belongs to the website owner. Check the Terms of Use, usually found in the website footer, before copying images or diagrams from a website. Ask for permission by sending a request via the website Contact page using the template letter in the Copyright for Researchers Toolkit .

The reproduction of figures and diagrams from scholarly journal articles in a thesis is typically available free of charge, but permission is still required.

The permission letter template in the Copyright for Researchers Toolkit  can be used in many cases, however, many publishers direct user permission requests to the RightsLink automated permission-granting service, whilst other publishers have their own online permission request form. The 'Request Permission' link is often found on the same page as the published article, or the journal website.

Publishers generally have a 'Permissions' link near the title of the article as shown in the example below. 

Permissions from a publisher come in the form of a licence.

Step 1:  The first step in gaining permission to reproduce a figure/table/diagram from a research article, or an entire article of which you are an author, in your thesis is to go to the published article in the journal and open the 'Tools' or 'Permissions' link or icon then select 'Request permission'. 

Note: A journal's 'Permissions' link is found in various places on the article webpage depending on the publisher, e.g. left or right-hand sidebar.

Step 2: The link will take you to the CCC RightsLink page as shown below. Select 'reuse in a dissertation/thesis'. Complete the form. 

Step 3: Click the 'Continue' button to acquire the licence that will provide permission to reproduce the self-authored article, or figure/table/diagram, from the article in your thesis.  Note that the licence is commonly free of charge.

The Manager, Scholarly Publications & Copyright can assist with copyright permissions and general copyright queries. Please make contact at least three (3) months before your thesis submission date for a thorough copyright check.

Example publisher licence application process

Step 1 - request permission.

The first step in gaining permission to reproduce a figure/table/diagram from a research article, or an entire article of which you are an author, in your thesis is to go to the published article in the journal and open the 'Tools' or 'Permissions' link or icon then select 'Request permission'. 

Step 2 - Complete the form

The link will take you to the CCC RightsLink page. Select 'reuse in a dissertation/thesis'. Complete the form. 

Step 3 - Acquire licence

Click the 'Continue' button to acquire the licence that will provide permission to reproduce the self-authored article, or figure/table/diagram, from the article in your thesis.  Note that the licence is commonly free of charge.

Step 4 - Compile permission files

All the publisher permission licenses should be compiled into one pdf file (named: Copyright Permissions) and this should be uploaded into WorkFlowGen with the pre-examination copy of your thesis.

Avoid plagiarism

Plagiarism occurs when the work of another person, or persons, is used and presented as one's own.

If you include other people’s words, ideas, or materials without proper acknowledgment (such as including an intext citation, footnote, and reference list entry) you are plagiarising. This is classified as academic misconduct.

The University regards very seriously any acts of cheating, or dishonesty by way of plagiarism and there is a range of penalties that may be imposed on an HDR student for instances of plagiarism which is a breach of the University's Research Misconduct Policy (available below).

Bond University uses Turnitin to check HDR student work for plagiarism.  Read the poster below which illustrates a wide range of actions that are plagiarism.

• Did I plagiarise? Download the 'Did I plagiarise?' poster.
• Research Misconduct Policy RES 4.5.5
• Academic integrity at Bond Academic integrity at Bond Academic Integrity at Bond means adhering, in words and actions and across all aspects of student life, to an academic moral code bound by the seven integrity principles of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, courage, and professionalism. Breaches of academic integrity are known as academic misconduct or academic dishonesty.

Moral rights

Creators of copyright material hold moral rights in the material they create even if they do not hold copyright.

They include the right:

• to be acknowledged or attributed as the creator of the work
• not to have their work falsely attributed, to anyone else, and
• not to have their work used in a derogatory manner.

You must fully acknowledge any copyright material that you use. The attribution must be clear and reasonably prominent in captions under artistic works such as images, diagrams and photographs no matter the source, whether it be a journal article, book, another thesis, or a website.  Literary works should always carry in-text citations and all works should appear in the reference list.

Further information

Copyright Guide for Research Students: What you need to know about copyright before depositing your electronic thesis in an online repository . This is a useful guide for PhD students that contains copyright scenarios.

See the ' Submitting a thesis ' tab for further information on presenting your copyright permissions and licences with your thesis.

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Manager, Scholarly Publications & Copyright +61 7 5595 1523 [email protected]

• Copyright and research

Copyright and your thesis

Researchers own copyright in their thesis. Under copyright, researchers have certain rights in their thesis such as:

• reproduction rights.
• publishing rights.
• communication rights, such as making the thesis available online.

As authors, researchers also have moral rights over their theses.

In some cases, research agreements or publishing agreements may affect the rights of a researcher's work, such as determining if a thesis can be made available on open access or if a thesis is connected to an embargo period.

Making a thesis available on open access

Before making a thesis available on open access, check that there are no legal or contractual qualifiers connected to the planned Open Access material release. Below are some possible examples:

• The clearance of any third-party material rights when they are included in the thesis.
• Any agreements/contracts, involving pre-published works.
• Any pending patent applications.
• The terms of research or funding agreements.
• The inclusion of any politically or legally sensitive information.

Dealing with copyright material created by other people

Seek permission from the copyright owner before including third-party copyright material in a thesis, unless there is a licence, agreement or exception that allows the inclusion of the third-party works in the thesis. Permission does not need to be sought if:

• Copyright in the work has  expired .
• An  insubstantial portion is included, for example, quotes from a book or journal article. Be careful if using quotes or excerpts from short works such as songs, poems or pieces of music as small portions are less likely to be considered insubstantial.
• An express  license allows the inclusion of the work, in the thesis, e.g. a contract, website conditions.
• Creative Commons material, copyright owner has explicitly waived copyright, etc.
• Use is covered under  fair dealing provisions .

Particular care should be taken if the thesis includes music, sound recordings or films as clearing the rights for this material can be difficult.

If unable to clear the rights for third party copyright material, it may be possible to publish a redacted version of the thesis on open access. A redacted version is one with any uncleared copyright material removed. For more information see the section on redacted version of your thesis.

Make sure that all third-party copyright material is acknowledged in theses, include full bibliographic citations.

Seeking permission to use copyright material

It is important to start the process of obtaining permission, as soon as possible when seeking permission to clear the rights to use third-party copyright material. Obtaining permission is an often lengthy and complex process. Sometimes a licensing fee may have to be paid, as it may not be possible to obtain permission.

All permission requests must be in writing. Keep copies of all permission documents as records of what permissions have been obtained. These records are considered legal documents and need to be kept for the copyright length of the thesis or as long as the thesis remains in open access. The University may request access to these permission documents.

Theses may need to be embargoed or published in redacted versions, where the third -party material has been removed while permission is being obtained or because permission cannot be obtained.

Refer to the Requesting permission from a copyright owner to reproduce material page for information on how to seek permission to use third-party copyright material.

Listing third party copyright material

The preparation of graduate research theses' rules requires the listing of all third-party copyright material included in theses and whether permissions from the copyright owners has been obtained. These permissions will be included in any open access version of theses. Third-party copyright includes:

• Audio-visual material, including sound recordings – both musical and non-musical – or films.

When creating the list of third-party copyright material included in a thesis, please use the template for listing third party copyright material (DOCX 13.5 KB) .

Is it worth $75? Copyright and copyright registration for theses and dissertations

Terrill, K., & Compton, L. (2021). Is it worth $75? Copyright and copyright registration for theses and dissertations. [White Paper]. Iowa State University Center for Communication Excellence, Graduate College. Retrieved from https://cce.pubpub.org/pub/copyright

Your head is still spinning with the mix of exhilaration, anxiety, and exhaustion from defending your graduate research to your POS committee. You passed! And you’ve jumped through most of the administrative hoops standing between you and your diploma. As you click through the ProQuest thesis/dissertation submission form, you click Save and Continue, and then you get to the “Register U.S. Copyright” screen. Your cover page contains a copyright statement, which was part of the ISU thesis/dissertation template. So, do you need to request for ProQuest to file for U.S. copyright registration? You skim over the wall of text on the ProQuest page and realize it raises more questions than it answers.

Introduction

The concept of copyright is often a confusing concept to many graduate students. This article is intended to define the concept and demystify some of the considerations so that you can make an informed decision about handling your copyright for your ISU thesis, dissertation, or creative component 1 .

As seen in the scenario, you will face the copyright questions when you plan to upload your thesis/dissertation to ProQuest. Figure 1 shows a screenshot from ProQuest.

At this point, you may begin to wonder how copyright impacts your thesis/dissertation. Here are some possible questions with the quick and easy answers.

Question: Do I need to request for ProQuest to file for U.S. copyright registration?

Answer : No. You own the copyright for your thesis/dissertation, whether or not it is registered.

Follow-up question : So, why should I copyright?

Answer : Registering your copyright gives you access to some additional legal protection.

Question : How should I copyright?

Answer : You can pay ProQuest to file the copyright for you, or you can file it yourself with a lower fee.

Figure 1: Screenshot of copyright questions from ProQuest

Now that you’ve gotten some quick and easy answers, you may want to understand more about what copyright is, how it works, and some guidance to help you decide whether and how to register your copyright. This article will give you some key ideas and links to other resources for further readings.

What is copyright?

Copyright concerns the legal right to share original works of authorship, which includes things like written work, artwork, non-patentable computer programs, sound recordings, choreography, and architectural works. Literally, it is the right to make a copy. [NO_PRINTED_FORM] It is illegal and a violation of copyright law to share and reproduce any kind of work without the copyright holder’s permission unless it falls under one of the exceptions to copyright law.

When you create an original work of authorship and you have not otherwise transferred or assigned ownership of that work to a third party, you might want to share it, and you are entitled to do just that. You are also entitled to get credit for the work. If people are willing to pay money for access to the work, you are entitled to receive payment for giving them access.

If someone else decides to share your work without your permission, you also have the right to prevent them from doing so, even if they modify the work in some way (this is called ‘preparing derivative works’). If someone else sharing your work leads to you missing out on the chance to collect payment for access to the work, you have the right to collect that payment from the person who shared your work.

The rights described above apply to all original works of authorship, whether the copyright is registered or not. Registering a copyright creates a formal record of a copyright ‘claim’, that is, of someone asserting their ownership of the original work of authorship.

In short, holding a copyright entitles you to share things that you create and to control who else can share things that you create.

How does copyright work?

“ Everyone is a copyright owner . Once you create an original work and fix it, like taking a photograph, writing a poem or blog, or recording a new song, you are the author and the owner.” US Copyright Office ( https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/ )

As soon as an original work of authorship is “’fixed’ in a tangible medium of expression”, it is automatically subject to copyright protection. In other words, you hold a copyright for anything you have ever written down, drawn up, typed out, drafted, sculpted, video recorded, etc., unless it involved copying an existing original work of authorship. Even if you accidentally shot a video of your hand and part of your knee when you were trying to switch your smartphone camera to the self-facing view, you own the copyright to that video. However, you don’t hold a copyright for notes you copied from a teacher’s PowerPoint, or for Hello Kitty doodles you drew in the margin, because those are derivative works.

Question : Do I own the copyright to my thesis/dissertation?

Answer : Yes, you generally own the copyright in this original scholarly work as soon as it’s fixed in a tangible medium of expression, unless you have transferred your ownership to someone else or it is a “work for hire” under copyright law.

Question : Are there instances where I don’t own copyright to my thesis/dissertation?

Answer : Yes. In some cases, you may not be the copyright owner even though you wrote the thesis/dissertation. This can occur when your research is sponsored by an organization or company and the sponsor requires ownership of all copyrightable works resulting from such a project, including academic papers. In such cases, the sponsored project agreement would require assignment of copyright to the sponsor. Graduate students are discouraged from working on such sponsored projects in order to preserve the student’s ability to publish and to minimize academic impacts. This can also occur if you are employed by an organization who is supporting your thesis/dissertation and you are required to assign your intellectual property to the organization as part of your terms of employment or your engagement constitutes “work for hire” under copyright law.

Question : What do I need to do if I am not the copyright owner of my thesis/dissertation or if I am unsure?

Answer : You may be asked by your major professor and/or sponsor to exclude the copyright statement from the Title Page. If this is the case, be sure to indicate this information to the Thesis/Dissertation Reviewer in ProQuest.

Question : What else do I need to do?

Answer : Email [email protected] to let the Graduate College know. The Graduate College will verify the copyright ownership with the Office of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer (OIPTT) https://www.techtransfer.iastate.edu/

Question : Are there any other considerations?

Answer : Check with your major professor and/or sponsor about the possibility of an embargo. For more information about embargoes, go to https://www.grad-college.iastate.edu/thesis/embargo-copyright/ or watch this Center for Communication Excellence’s YouTube video “Thesis/Dissertation Embargo: What Graduate Students Need To Know”.

Transferring copyright

Some graduate students have complicated situations involving other parties who may have rights or licenses related to the copyright on their thesis, dissertation, or creative component. Here are a couple of common scenarios where you may need to transfer your copyright.

Granting a license

As the author of an original work, you may choose to give others permission to reproduce your work. For instance, you may submit a manuscript based on your thesis to a peer-reviewed journal, or your poem to a publisher. If you agree to give permission to only one entity at a time (which some journals and publishers require), then you grant them an exclusive license.

Work made for hire

If your research takes place during the course of your employment through your place of employment, then your thesis, dissertation, or creative component may be considered work made for hire. In this case, the person or company who hired you is considered the author and copyright owner of the work. You cannot register a copyright for a work that you made for hire as you are not the copyright owner. (see also Section 3. How does copyright work? )

Registering copyright

So far, this article has discussed how you are the copyright owner of your thesis/dissertation unless you have otherwise transferred or assigned copyright in your work to a third party or it is considered a work for hire. This section discusses whether it is necessary to file for a copyright for your work.

Copyright claims are valuable because they entitle the holder to enjoy the benefits of creating the work. These could include esteem and honor, money, and feelings of satisfaction and pride. Setting an original work of authorship loose into the world can put some of these benefits in jeopardy.

Question : Must I register my copyright with the US Copyright Office?

Answer: No. You automatically own the copyright to your thesis/dissertation as the creator of the original work unless you have otherwise transferred or assigned your copyright to a third party or it falls under “works made for hire”.

Question : So, what is the big deal about copyright?

Answer: Even though you own the copyright to your thesis/dissertation, registering for a copyright will be necessary if you ever need to bring a lawsuit for the infringement of a US work.

You may be wondering now if you should or shouldn’t register your thesis/dissertation. Only YOU can answer that question. If you have purchased an air-ticket or booked a vacation before, you will know that you have the choice of purchasing an insurance policy to protect your cost in case something prevents you from making the trip. In most cases, you do not need to claim the insurance because the chances of something preventing you from your trip are slim. However, in some cases, you may be glad that you did buy the insurance policy because something did happen. The same goes for your decision to register your thesis/dissertation. You may also want to seek out counsel from your major professor and the Office of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer (OIPTT) if you have questions about registering your thesis/dissertation especially if it contains a patent, an original concept, or marketable materials.

If you have more questions about Copyright in General, it is a good time to pause and read up on this Frequently Asked Questions from the US Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#protect

Types of damages

Copyright protection is automatic, but there are many reasons why you might choose to register your thesis/dissertation. One common reason is simply to have your copyright as a public record and have a copy of certification of registration. A second reason, as mentioned earlier, is to have a legal claim if you need to bring an infringement lawsuit.

Copyright holders can sue people who infringe on their copyright. In this situation, the copyright holder may simply want to force the infringer to stop what they are doing. However, they can also sue the infringer for money, which is called damages. There are two types of damages: actual damages and statutory damages.

Actual damages

Actual damages refers to the loss of money or other material asset that is caused by the infringement. Say, for instance, that your thesis contains a poem, which you later publish in a book that gets sold in bookstores. If a poetry blogger were to reprint the poem that you included in your thesis on their website, some poetry enthusiasts might choose to read your poem on that website instead of purchasing your book at a bookstore. If you can prove that the sales of your book were harmed because the poem was published without your permission on the blogger’s website, then you could sue that blogger for actual damages. However, this could be challenging to prove.

Statutory damages

Statutory damages refers to amounts pre-determined by statute to be awarded to a plaintiff if copyright infringement is found, including attorney fees. Unlike actual damages, statutory damages are not linked to loss of money or material asset experienced by the plaintiff. A copyright holder who receives statutory damages does not need to prove that the copyright infringement caused them to lose profit; all they need to prove is that their copyright was infringed. However, statutory damages are generally not available in infringement of an unregistered work. Additionally, statutory damages are only available if the thesis/dissertation was registered within 3 months of publications, or if the thesis/dissertation was unpublished, it must have been registered prior to the act of infringement.

Question : So, if I did not register my thesis/dissertation, I cannot bring my copyright infringement case to court?

Answer: Yes. Even though you own the copyright to your thesis/dissertation, you can only be eligible to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement if you registered your copyright with the US Copyright Office prior to the act of infringement.

Question: What if I registered my copyright after I discover the act of infringement and brought a claim to court?

Answer: You can register your copyright and then bring a claim, but it will not be eligible for statutory damages since the copyright was not registered prior to the act of infringement. Furthermore, as indicated in 6.1 Actual damages, actual damages must be proven, and that could be challenging.

Exercising copyright

You can register your copyright with the US Copyright Office at any time; it does not have to be registered when you publish your thesis/dissertation. However, if someone infringes your copyright when it is not registered, you may waive your ability to seek statutory damages and will be required to prove actual damages.

Should you register for U.S. copyright through ProQuest?

Having read through this article and learned more about copyright than you ever thought you would, you may have made up your mind to register your copyright for your thesis, dissertation, or creative component. The only question that remains is whether you should do this through ProQuest.

Using ProQuest to register your thesis/dissertation will cost more money than registering it yourself directly with the U.S. Copyright Office. The extra cost is a convenience fee that ProQuest collects in exchange for completing your registration application on your behalf.

To register your copyright yourself costs about $45; the cost to have ProQuest register your copyright is about $75.

Note: The fees listed are based on the time of publication. The fees may change over time. Please check with the US Copyright Office and ProQuest for actual fees.

Additional Resources

Below are additional resources that may help you decide if you should or should not register your copyright.

Copyright Basics Information provided by the U.S. Copyright Office summarizing the rights of copyright holders

Should I Copyright my Dissertation? Provides guidance on whether to register a copyright for your thesis, dissertation, or creative component 

Copyright for Dissertations List of definitions of relevant terms in everyday language

Subject Matter and Scope of Copyright List of definitions, rights, and limitations of copyright in formal legal language

Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis Provides guidance on how to avoid infringing on someone else’s copyright, and how to request official permission to reproduce copyrighted material

Acknowledgement

We offer our deepest appreciation to Barbara Biederman from Iowa State University’s Office of University Counsel for her knowledge and feedback; her expertise provided invaluable information about the topic and guided our final draft.

Menand, L. (2004). Crooner in rights spat: Are copyright laws too strict? The New Yorker , October 20, 2014.

US Copyright Office (2021). Register your work: Registration portal. Copyright.gov. https://www.copyright.gov/registration/

Copyright and Fair Use: Copyright Concerns of Students

• Showing Movies in Class and On Campus
• Copyright & Online Teaching
• Copyright Concerns of Students
• Plagiarism and Academic Integrity
• Rights of Authors
• The Public Domain
• Creative Commons
• Copyright Claims Board

RIM - Research in Ministry

Using Copyright Works of Others in Thesis/Dissertation

You should assume that anything produced by someone other than yourself is protected by copyright unless you determine otherwise (e.g. determine that the term of copyright protection has expired and the work is in the public domain). The types of works protected by copyright include books, articles, newspapers, photographs, music, movies, software, and even things you find on the internet.

Use of works protected by copyright in your dissertation or thesis will need either permission or a fair use justification. Fair use is an exception to the copyright holder's exclusive rights. In order to use copyrighted works under a claim of fair use, the following factors must be weighed: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. For more on fair use, click on the Fair Use tab above.

Fair use provides an indispensable opportunity for scholarship, since so much of research involves building upon the insights of others. Quotations from other writers are a regular part of most scholarship and are generally consider a classic example of fair use. There is no exact rule about how much one may quote and remain within the boundaries of fair use. Various guidelines that offer specific numbers of words or lines are advisory and do not have the force of law. In general, quotations from the work of others should be no longer than is necessary to support the scholarly point you wish to make. When you are subjecting the quoted material to scholarly criticism or comment, you have more leeway for fair use than in many other situations, but you should be sure that you do not use more of someone else's work than is necessary for the argument that you are making in your own thesis/dissertation.

In the case of images, you should be sure that the pictures you reproduce are closely tied to your research goals and are each made the subject of specific scholarly comment. If you use a large number of copyright-protected images by a single artist, or in some other way threaten to supersede the market for the original works, it is wise to seek permission. If you have flexibility in the final selection of your images, search for images that are 1) in the public domain, or 2) made available for reuse via a Creative Commons license. Such images can be incorporated into your dissertation without permission or concern for fair use.

If you determine that permission is necessary, the first step is to locate the copyright holder. This may not always be the author; sometimes copyright ownership is transferred to a publisher or to an author's estate if he or she is deceased. Once you determine who to request permission from, it is best to send a written letter of request. An email letter is sufficient. It is best to get written documentation of permissions. You should retain copies of all permissions in your files. 

Finally, remember to always provide proper attribution to the sources of the works you incorporate into your thesis or dissertation. Proper attribution is absolutely required; that’s a part of academic integrity and good scholarship. Copyright permission, if necessary, is an entirely separate matter and does not obviate the need for attribution.

From Dissertation to Publication - FAQ on Student Author Rights

Who owns the copyright of a thesis or dissertation?

You do! The copyright of a thesis or dissertation belongs to you as the author. Under the U.S. Copyright Act, works are automatically copyrighted at the moment they are fixed in a tangible form, including residing on your computer's hard drive. You continue to own that copyright until you transfer it to another party.  A transfer of copyright must be in writing. If parts of a work have already been published and copyright in those other works was transferred to someone else (e.g. a publisher), copyright of those parts remains with whom it was transferred to.

Do I need to register my copyright?

You do not need to register with the Copyright Office in order to enjoy copyright protection. Such protection is automatic, coming into effect at the moment a work is fixed in a tangible form. However, registration has certain advantages.  First, if your work is registered you have strong evidence that you are the author of the work and the owner of its copyright. Also, registration is necessary to enforce a copyright against an infringer or plagiarist. For full detail, read t he U.S. Copyright Office circular "Copyright Basics" . 

Can I use previously published articles of my own in my work?

It depends. You will need to review the agreement you signed with the publisher of our previously published article. Most agreements require you to transfer your copyright to the publisher. If this is the case, you must request permission from the publisher to "reprint" the article as a chapter in your dissertation. However, some agreements specify that you retain the right to reprint the article in your dissertation. The chart below details several publishers' policies with respect to reusing your own previously published work in a thesis or dissertation; however, you should always review the terms of any agreement you signed.

What is open access, and how does it apply to my thesis or dissertation?

Articles, books, theses and dissertations are said to be "open access" when they are "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." By making publications open access, the widest sharing of ideas and research results is made possible, which is generally done either by publishing in open access journals or depositing them in open access repositories such as an institutional repository.

Will journal or book publishers consider publishing my work if it is based on an open access thesis or dissertation?

Recent surveys  show that a majority of journal editors and university presses would accept submissions of articles and book manuscripts that were based upon theses or dissertations, even if they are available in an open access repository. This is in part because most publishers consider theses and dissertations to be "student work" that will require substantial editing and revision before being published in article or book form. The chart below summarizes the policies of some publishers regarding the publication of new works from a thesis or dissertation.

Publisher Policies - Publishing a Dissertation or Reusing One's Published Work in a Dissertation

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The University of Otago Library has re-designed its Subject Guides system. Please let us know what you think by filling out this survey.

Thesis Information: Copyright

• Introduction
• Reviewing Literature

Copyright and your thesis - a bundle of rights

You own your own work, access to your thesis via our archive, licensing your work, using the work of others, copying where you don't need permission, copying where you need permission, finding things you can reuse, publishing articles or chapters during or after your thesis.

• Supervisors
• Māori Postgraduates

Think of your thesis as a bundle of material from different sources, where copyright in each element may be owned by different people or organisations. Most of it will be your work, of course, but most theses contain images, diagrams, tables, data and words created by others. You can use these within certain limits, as explained below, but beyond those limits you may need permission. This takes time so don't leave it until the last minute. Don't worry, there's expert advice and support available from:

• Manager, Copyright & Open Access , and 
• Subject Librarians

After reading this guide, you might like to refer to the very detailed NZ Copyright Guidelines for Research Students 2nd ed. 2012.

As a student, you own copyright in your own work. This is made explicit in the University's Intellectual Property Rights of Graduate Research Students Policy . Note that there are some important provisos, such as when your research is externally funded.

In general, if you write text, make diagrams, create software, collect data, etc., then you own the copyright in those things. However, there can be grey areas, for example if you're using a survey tool developed by your supervisor or you're collecting data that is part of a larger set gathered by a research lab over many years. If you are unsure about who owns what talk to your supervisor or the University's copyright officer.

It's a really good idea, as suggested in the IP Rights policy, to develop an agreement in writing with your supervisor. Even when there is no commercial value in your work – which is true in most cases – it is still important to clarify expectations about what you create as part of your research. Think about what each of you might expect to happen after study: who can do what with the data you gather or materials you create? What will you or they publish based on the research? The important thing is to talk about it, agree, and put that agreement in writing in some form.

The Submission tab of this guide goes into detail about the process for depositing the electronic version of your thesis, including details about permissions you gained for using others' work.

When you deposit your thesis you fill out an Author Declaration form, which includes a section called "Access to my thesis."

• Choosing the open access means your thesis will be free-to-read for anyone with an internet connection. They can read it, download a copy to their device, and quote or critique your work, as anyone can with any work.
• See below on choosing how to licence your work. 
• It's key to understand that copyright protects the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves. In publishing your ideas anywhere (e.g. even in a journal or a book), it is the article or book itself that is protected by copyright, not the ideas expressed or explained in it. 
• Removing barriers to your work has been shown to improve its impact through more diverse readership and citations . 
• You can choose to make your thesis abstract-only for six months, after which it will become free-to-read.
• Embargoing your thesis is different from choosing the abstract-only option for six months and requires approval.

Your thesis is just like a book: hopefully people will want to read and reuse it. As copyright owner, you can decide whether you want to retain all rights or licence your work with an open access licence. Your options are:

• All rights reserved . All published books have a page called the "verso". This is the page that will say something like "All rights reserved (C) Jane Suzuki 2024. No part of this work may be copied without permission." For your thesis, you are automatically the copyright holder, even if you don't write any of this on it. The default copyright rules apply: you retain the standard rights under NZ copyright law as having the exclusive right to copy, share, adapt, translate, perform or otherwise communicate your work. However, as explained above, people can read it and download a personal copy or take out quotes. 
• Open Access / Creative Commons . Alternatively, you could choose to licence your thesis with a Creative Commons licence, which are a simple, legally-robust international standard by which you can tell other people about how they can access and reuse your work. For more explanation, watch the video below or see CC BY: what does it mean for scholarly articles?  
• How do I apply my choice of licence, whether it's all rights reserved or Creative Commons? It's as simple as writing the words, like the all rights reserved example above. If you go with Creative Commons, you can use their tool to select a licence and the text/logo that you can include on your own verso page in your thesis.

Creative Commons explained

Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ. (2011).  Creative Commons Licenses explained. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyWdeNQ7fo0 >

You will probably use things created by others in your thesis: images, diagrams, tables, maps, data, video, audio, etc. This is sometimes referred to as 'third party' copyright. You can sometimes use others' work without seeking permission but it depends on a few factors, as explained below.

And remember, if you co-authored a work with someone, they own a share of the copyright and need to grant permission too.

• Open access
• Public domain
• Fair Dealing (Criticism & Review)
• Website terms

You don't always need permission to copy someone else's work. Use the tabs above, going from left to right, to see what might apply to material you want to include in your thesis.

Open Access material

You'll find more and more content on the web being made available under open licences that allow reuse. An individual work, such as a journal article, may include a copyright statement that allows reuse, such as this online article (find the word 'copyright' on the page) or printed on its PDF version ; sometimes websites include blanket statements that cover all the material on that site, such as Statistics NZ .

TIP: always check a website for a 'terms of use' or 'copyright' page and see what it says. If it says 'all rights reserved' or similar then you need to think about whether your use is fair dealing or to seek permission, as explained below.

Public domain (aka copyright has expired)

Copyright does expire, of course, which renders these questions null and void. However, working out whether copyright has expired is notoriously difficult, even for experts. It's best to get advice on this from the people listed as contacts above.

Fair dealing

Fair dealing (or 'fair use' in some parts of the world) is a key concept in copyright law. It allows any person to use copyrighted material in certain ways where you would otherwise have to seek the permission of the copyright holder. There are important limits and it is your decision as to whether your use would qualify as fair or not.

For research and private study you can make a single, working copy of a legally obtained original, though there would be limits to this (e.g. a chapter or 10% of a book; for rarer or older material you might be able to copy more - ask a librarian).

For the purpose of criticism or review (i.e. what you might do in your thesis), you might be able to copy someone else's work. Short quotations, properly attributed, are acceptable. It's trickier with things like images, which are a whole work in and of themselves, diagrams, tables, etc. Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I critiquing the work in some way or reviewing it? e.g. putting it in the context of other work in the discipline or comparing it to my own research results in this thesis. This question is critical: if you're just copying to save yourself some work and not commenting on it you should seek permission.
• Is the work commercially available for reuse?  Many publishers provide a means to licence use of their content in theses and books.
• Is the copying substantial?
• Could I just describe the thing in words or provide a link for readers and avoid copying altogether?

More on fair dealing:

• What is fair dealing with copyright material? (University website)
• Who puts the 'fair' in fair dealing? (External website)

Check a website's terms of use

Even websites that say they are all rights reserved sometimes say that certain uses are OK or that copying within certain limits are OK. Check the terms of use. For example, the American Psychological Association clearly explains what you need to seek permission for and what you don't (e.g. it says that up to three figures or tables are OK).

• Seeking permission
• Whom do I ask?
• Recording Permission
• Thesis Deposit and Permissions

If your use of others' copyright material doesn't fit within what's outlined above, you may need to get permission.

TIP: with the larger commercial publishers, you will often find a standard form for requesting permissions. This is sometimes a link on a website's 'contact us' or 'terms / copyright' pages; other times you might find a 'Get  permissions' link on pages for individual articles. These forms usually have boxes and drop down menus to specify how much you want to use and for what purpose. Check out a video on this.

Otherwise, contact the copyright owner and advise them that you intend to use their work, detail the pages, graphs, diagrams, etc. you want to use and in what ways. Do this in writing so you have a record.

• Sample letter to use copyrighted work in a thesis or publication

With traditionally published material, the publisher will most likely hold copyright so ask them (not the author). With Open Access material, you don't need to ask because the open access licence gives you permission up front. If the copyright holder is an individual person then contact the person; if the person has died then you need to contact their estate. If you want to use material held by galleries, libraries, archives and museums, they may require permission. Note that your use might still be allowed without permission, as outlined in the boxes above this one. However, there may also be non-copyright reasons why you can't copy something, like indigenous property rights.

TIP: if you have an image and you can't remember where you got it from, you can 'reverse search' for images using Google image search or Tineye . Basically you can upload an image (rather than entering text) and the search will show you images it thinks are the same or similar. This can be useful in tracking down where images came from and who might own the copyright.

When you receive permission to use a work in your thesis, record the details, such as:

• who you sought permission from,
• what permission you sought,
• which material it relates to,
• what sort of permission was granted e.g. was it granted for print use but not digital,
• the relevant dates

One way to record these is to use a Permissions log. Another option is to use reference management software such as Endnote or Zotero.

In the thesis itself, you should not only attribute each source as you normally would but also add a rights statement such as 'Copyright XYZ Publishing, used with permission' or describe the licence that applies. For work licensed under Creative Commons, check their best practice for attributions .

When Permission is Not Granted (including not hearing back)

Some copyright owners may not grant you permission to use their work. Some may not respond (or even exist anymore!). If you don't hear back that doesn't mean you can use it. If you don't get permission then consider:

• linking to the original;
• finding an openly-licensed alternative (see the 'Finding things you can reuse' box below);
• reworking the material so that it is no longer a direct quotation or duplication, referencing it and indicating that the material has been adapted or modified; or
• reducing the amount of material quoted so that it falls within fair dealing, and reference it.

Permissions Log - one of the additional files you will upload when you deposit the electronic version of your thesis. Such evidence provided to the Library will be retained offline , together with the corresponding thesis. 

If permission to use works of others has either not been sought, or has been refused, those particular items in your thesis (photos, tables, etc) will not be made accessible within Otago University Research (OUR) Archive, or your thesis can be submitted at Abstract only level .  Add a note per item to indicate which have been suppressed, e.g. “This image has been removed for copyright reasons”.

You may have other additional files, e.g. sound, video, image or data, that are part of your research output. Provide a URL or option to download when you deposit them.

For openly-licensed works you can reuse, use the search engines on the following sites. In most cases, you need to use licensing filters on the advanced search or the results page.

Photographs, images

Europeana , Digital Public Library of America , DigitalNZ (all public aggregators of millions of works)

Flickr , Everystockphoto , Google images (using Search tools/Usage rights filter on the results page), Gratisography , Pixabay , Freepik

Wikimedia Commons (includes graphs, diagrams, ...)

Wellcome images ("...ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and science.")

Soundcloud , Jamendo

Many students will consider or even be expected to publish articles or chapters while working on or after completing their thesis. This is fine in most cases but you should always check the policies of publishers you're considering or likely to submit to. These policies should make clear whether the publisher accepts thesis-related work. Consult the MIT Library website for a comprehensive list of major publishers' policies . If the publisher you're looking at isn't listed there then search the publisher's website for 'thesis' or 'prior publication' or consult their information for authors.

This is especially important for students completing a thesis by publication.

Note that you will always be able to include your publications in your thesis and have it examined -- the restriction may be on whether your final thesis can be made free-to-access via OUR Archive when you make your thesis deposit.

A related issue is that the rules for what you might be able to copy in your thesis can change when publishing with a commercial publisher. Even if something is allowed by the law (e.g. fair dealing for criticism and review to quote a short extract from another article), some publishers may require you to clear permission for everything . In other words, this is their practice as a matter of policy.. 

• << Previous: Reviewing Literature
• Next: Writing >>
• Last Updated: Jul 16, 2024 4:22 PM
• URL: https://otago.libguides.com/thesisinformation

• University of Michigan Library
• Research Guides

Copyright for Dissertations

• Using Others' Content
• Copyright in Your Dissertation
• Publishing Your Dissertation

Copyright Questions?

The University of Michigan Library Copyright Office provides help with copyright questions for University of Michigan faculty, staff and students. Please email us with questions or visit our website for more information.

Legal Advice

The information presented here is intended for informational purposes and should not be construed as legal advice. If you have specific legal questions pertaining to the University of Michigan, please contact the Office of the General Counsel .

If you require legal advice in your personal capacity, the lawyer referral services operated by the Washtenaw County Bar Association and the State Bar of Michigan may be helpful to you.

Using Third-Party Materials in Your Dissertation

If you use materials (such as text, images, sound recordings, etc.) created by a third party in your dissertation, you need to consider whether copyright law allows your use of those materials. In some cases, even reusing your own published articles can raise copyright concerns, if you have transferred your copyright to someone else, like your publisher. Even when copyright permits your use of a work, contract law may prevent it. When you agree to terms of use in order to gain access to a copy of a work (such as a letter in an archive or a newspaper article in an online database), those terms also control what you can do with the work.

You can proceed without copyright permission if you are using something that is not  copyrightable  or is in the  public domain . You also don't need permission if you are using it in a way that does not implicate one of the  rights of copyright holders  or is permitted by a  user’s right , such as fair use. If none of these circumstances applies, you need a  license  to use the work. In some cases, an existing license may cover your use. In others, you will need to get a new license from the copyright holder. For more information on these subjects, please see our  Copyright Basics  and  Obtaining Copyright Permissions  guides.

In addition to the copyright issues, it is also vital to follow attribution norms within your discipline. For more information about the distinction between plagiarism and copyright infringement, see below.

Contracts at Libraries, Archives, and Museums

Some institutions require you to sign an agreement before accessing their collections. That agreement may limit your ability to use their materials. These agreements are valid even when the materials are in the public domain or using the materials would qualify as fair use. For instance, if you agree to get permission from the institution before publishing any images of items from its collection, you are bound by that agreement.

To avoid trouble on this issue,

• Ask up front what the terms are and whether you can use the materials in your dissertation;
• Carefully read the terms of any agreements you sign; and
• Keep a copy of the terms, noting the materials to which they apply.

Fair Use in Dissertations

Fair use allows certain uses of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder. There are four factors to consider when determining whether your use is a fair one. You must consider all the factors, but not all the factors have to favor fair use for the use to be fair. The outline below explains how the fair use factors and their subfactors apply to using third-party material in a University of Michigan dissertation.

First Factor: "The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes"

Uses that fall under one of the favored purposes listed in the fair use statute (17 U.S.C. § 107) or have a nonprofit educational purpose will weigh in favor of fair use. Favored purposes include scholarship, research, criticism, and comment. Since uses in dissertations often have these purposes, this subfactor favors fair use.

Uses that are commercial weigh against fair use. Most uses in dissertations are not for commercial purposes, but that may change if you publish your dissertation with ProQuest or another commercial entity.

Uses that are transformative weigh in favor of fair use. A use is transformative when the use adds new meaning or message to the original work, giving it a new purpose. For example, imagine you are writing your dissertation about the impacts of advertising directed to children. You include a toy advertisement and analyze how it reached a child audience. The original purpose of the advertisement was to increase demand for the toy, while your purpose is for scholarship and critique, making your use transformative. Quoting another scholar's analysis of the advertisement would not necessarily be transformative, though it is still often fair use.

Second Factor: "The nature of the copyrighted work"

If the work used is creative, that will weigh against fair use. If the work used is factual, that will weigh in favor of fair use. The outcome of this subfactor varies depending on the work used.

If the work used is unpublished, that will weigh against fair use. However, the fair use statute explicitly states that the unpublished nature of a work will not bar fair use if the use is otherwise fair. The outcome of this subfactor varies depending on the work used.

Third Factor: "The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"

Using all or much of the original work will weigh against fair use. The outcome of this subfactor varies depending on the use.

Using the most important part of the original work (the "heart") will weigh against fair use, even if it is only a small amount of the work. The outcome of this subfactor varies depending on the use.

The third factor is neutralized if the amount used is necessary for a transformative purpose, even if the entire original work is used. For instance, the third factor would be neutralized in the use of the toy advertisement described above — all of the advertisement has to be used in order to achieve the transformative use.

Fourth Factor: "The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work"

Uses that decrease demand for the original work by providing a substitute will weigh against fair use. In many cases, using a work in your dissertation will not provide a substitute for the original work, but the outcome of this subfactor can vary depending on the use.

Uses that decrease demand for the original work by criticizing it (as with a negative film review) have no impact on the fourth factor.

If the licensing market for the use you are making is "traditional, reasonable, or likely to develop," that will weigh against fair use.

Resources on Fair Use

• Fair Use Checklist This checklist from the Columbia Copyright Advisory Office helps users consider the factors and subfactors of the fair use analysis.
• Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use These codes document the shared best practices of communities that rely on fair use, including fair use for online video, fair use of images for teaching, research, and study, fair use for OpenCourseWare, fair use for documentary filmmakers, fair use for the visual arts, and fair use for academic and research libraries.
• Summaries of Fair Use Cases This set of case summaries from Stanford is a good resource for learning about fair use law.
• US Copyright Office Fair Use Index This index of fair use cases is searchable by media format, case outcome, jurisdiction, and date. It is helpful for learning about legal precedents and judicial interpretation of the fair use doctrine.
• Fair Use for Nonfiction Authors This guide, published by the Authors Alliance, explains when fair use applies to the use of sources in nonfiction works such as scholarly articles. It has been endorsed by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Using Material Under an Existing License

A Creative Commons license makes it easy for you to know how you can use a work. Images licensed under Creative Commons licenses can be particularly useful if you need a generic rather than specific image. Because the rights holder has already given everyone permission to use the image under the terms of the license, you do not need to evaluate fair use or seek permission in order to use it.

When you use a work licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses, you need to comply with the license requirements (unless your use is otherwise permitted, e.g., by fair use). All Creative Commons licenses require attribution. Using the work without giving attribution means you do not meet the legal conditions of the license. However, the licenses are deliberately flexible about the requirements for that attribution. The  Best Practices for Attribution  are outlined on the Creative Commons wiki. Our guide to  Creative Commons licenses has more information on this topic.

Creative Commons Resources

When works are marked with code generated by the Creative Commons License Chooser , that mark is machine readable. A number of search tools allow users to limit their search by license.

• CC Search CC Search enables users to search across multiple platforms for content licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses.
• Google: Find Free-to-Use Images This page explains how to use Google's search engines to find images, text, and videos that are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.

Copyright Infringement vs. Plagiarism

Copyright infringement and plagiarism are related but distinct concepts. Plagiarism is using the work of another without attribution. Copyright infringement is any reproduction, distribution, modification, performance, or display of a copyrighted work without the permission of the rights holder that does not fall under fair use or another user's right.

It is possible to plagiarize even when you have cleared permission for all the copyrighted works. Similarly, it is possible to infringe copyright even when you have given careful attribution. In addition to resolving the copyright issues, you must follow attribution norms within your discipline in order to avoid plagiarizing others' work. 

U.S. copyright law does not require citation in a particular form. However, following academic citation norms can help improve your fair use analysis. Check with your dissertation advisor for help figuring out what citation style you should use in your dissertation.

The Rackham Dissertation Handbook (PDF)  says sources that must be cited include, but are not limited to:

language or wording either taken directly or paraphrased from another source, whether published or not; concepts, interpretations, techniques, methods, test instruments or procedures borrowed or adapted from another work, whether published or not; charts, graphs or figures borrowed or adapted from another source, whether published or not; photographs, films, recordings, digital material or other images from another source; and data, surveys or results of any kind from any other inquiry or investigation.

The Sweetland Center for Writing provides a number of resources on plagiarism and how to avoid it, including Beyond Plagiarism: Best Practices for the Responsible Use of Sources .

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Q&A for work

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How can I find images to use in my thesis that are free/unrestricted by copyright?

I need to add some images to my thesis. I would strongly prefer that these are free (no cost) and not restricted by copyright. I have used Google Image to find images, I don't know how to determine what the copyright restrictions are, or what license types apply. I will not use them in any published paper, just for my unpublished thesis.

P.S. Here are the search options for Google Image:

• creative-commons

• 2 Depends on the license terms under which your thesis will be distributed and the laws of the country in which you're writing it. –  David Z Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 7:32
• 1 The easiest solution (if you had a budget for it) would be to commission an artist. –  emory Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 10:11
• 1 In addition to the helpful answers below, and the mention of Flickr, there are websites which specialise in copyright-free images. For example, I use Pixabay frequently - all the images there are under Creative Commons. You may be able to use Google to find a similar website which provides the pictures you want. –  Luna Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 10:17
• 3 @phresnel For my thesis, I had to inquire about the copyright for one single image; so this is not really something that comes up often. Degrees tell only a small fraction about overall ability, indeed. For example, I am not great at knitting. –  henning no longer feeds AI Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 14:01
• 2 Could you tell me why does your thesis need generic images (i.e. ones which can be found on the Internet, whether free or not)? –  Piotr Migdal Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 13:37

10 Answers 10

You can't rely on the options for Google Image search. Instead, you will have to do additional research for each of the images you find and intend to use.

First, you need to find the original author/creator of that image. It may or may not be the same as the owner/creator of the web site where you find the image. (They may have copied the image from somewhere else, with or without permission.) You can use Google Image search "search by image" option to find other copies of that same image on other sites.

Second, you need to find the copyright statement for that image on the site of the owner . In many cases, you'll find a copyright statement as part of the "Terms of Service" for the whole web site. In other cases, there will be a copyright statement for each and every image.

Third, when in doubt, you need to contact the author/owner and ask for permission to use the image.

If all this seems cumbersome and so non-digital, be aware that copyright law (and intellectual property rights law in general) still lives in the pre-digital age. Lawyers still send faxes to each other and to the courts. Think about that.

• Thanks @MrMeritology. From your comment I can assume that Google Image filters are totally useless. The idea was to use some images from others in order to save some time. If there is no straightforward way to find free scientific images, I might skip images in thesis. Only text in the introduction and discussion. For me is OK, lets see for the committee. –  biotech Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 9:54
• @biotech yes, google filters are completely useless. And also, you may have to cite the image author in your sources, depending on where you are. –  Mindwin Remember Monica Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 13:26
• 1 What is this thing you call "fax"...? (just kidding, but that is pretty ridiculous) –  user541686 Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 10:03

This depends highly on your countries laws and regulations.

For example: The German copyright laws has some limitations for the use of works in the area of teaching and research .

With the CC licenses you risk less mistakes. But you have to take care of the correct distribution.

• name the author and source if the license contains BY.
• don't change the file and only use it in the original composition when license contains ND (no derivate).
• don't use media with licenses containing NC (not commercial) in a thesis or paper that contributes to (pending) patents. That could be interpreted to be a commercial use.
• [changed:] according to the (IANAL-)comments one can use SA (share alike) licensed material without putting your thesis under the same license

In any case, pages that give information about the media-license are good sources, because you mostly have a clear licensing statement for any file. So you can easily decide whether and how to use it. I doubt that an author will change the license later on. You could use a web preservation repository service like WebCite to create evidence that the file had a specific license when you found and decided to use it.

Suggestions for search:

• Wikimedia Commons
• Flickr (thanks to Henning for the suggestion)

• 3 "be aware to put your thesis under the same license as the used media if their licenses contain SA (share alike)" - I wonder whether this is accurate. Just like a software package can contain single files whose license deviates from the license of the rest of the files in the package, can't a thesis document be subject to license X, with the exception of some graphics depicted in the thesis that are (both originally, and still in the thesis) subject to license Y? –  O. R. Mapper Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 8:47
• 1 @O. R. Mapper: That's a good point. The sentence I wrote is my understanding of the share alike (SA) property. Maybe someone else can provide a more detailed view on SA property as a comment. –  André Kleinschmidt Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 8:51
• 2 In particular, I could create a graphic on my own, include it in my thesis and declare that particular graphic to be licensed as CC-BY-SA, even though the entirety of my thesis is not. That sounds like it should work, as otherwise, non-CC-BY-SA-licensed "works" (books, websites, ...) could never publish CC-BY-SA-licensed graphics, which probably isn't the case (?) But if that is possible, it sounds reasonable to assume that CC-BY-SA-works that I took from elsewhere could just as well be integrated (and republished as CC-BY-SA) in non-CC-BY-SA-works. IANAL. Maybe warrants a new question. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 8:54
• 2 Case in point: Websites such as Wikimedia Commons could never contain both images subject to the CC-BY-SA license and images subject to the CC-BY-NC-SA license at the same time. (Not to mention other share-alike-licenses with more incompatible other terms.) –  O. R. Mapper Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 8:58
• 3 Yes, you can use a CC-BY-SA image in eg. a book without it having to be CC-BY-SA itself. The bigger work is what is called an aggregation . Note that for instance Creative Commons considers that you can use sharealike images in a document without infecting the document. The FSF thinks the document would need to be under such license. Other people consider that in both cases you can include the images. And of course, for legal advice you should consult your lawyer about the specific license, IANAL. –  Ángel Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 13:07

I'm a strong supporter of Wikipedia and her sister projects. One of those projects is exactly what you're looking for. The Wikimedia Commons is a database of 26,536,356+ freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. There are millions of images (not just photographs) and thousands added each day. You can view all the licensing for every media file, although that might not be entirely necessary considering all of them are free to use.

• I was going to suggest the same. Wikimedia Commons is awesome. –  Miguel Commented Jul 4, 2015 at 16:34

Flickr makes it very easy to find images that have a "free" license in the sense explained in Andrés answer . These also include beautiful images from public archives , such as the British Library. In contrast to a google image search (see MrMeritology's answer ), the author and copyright information on Flickr are reliable. However, one caveat is that the author might change the license and you have no way to prove that the work was "free" when you first used it.

If you are confused whether or not you can reuse a copyrighted image, this flowchart might help.

I wanted a very specific image for my dissertation, and found a simple solution - I drew it myself, and scanned the result. Since I created it, the copyright status was exactly the same as the words I was writing. It did not need any acknowledgement or reference. It cost me a few dollars for materials, and about an hour of my time.

• Are you kidding? The images I need are from the papers I cite in the introduction. –  biotech Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 17:28
• No, I'm not kidding. Whether draw-it-yourself works for a specific image depends on the situation. If you need images from existing papers, I don't see any alternative to contacting the copyright holders of those papers to request permission to use those images. –  Patricia Shanahan Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 18:17

There are a number of sites where you can download images. For certain sites, attribution isn't required (but usually appreciated). For example:

• https://picjumbo.com/
• https://pixabay.com/en/
• https://stocksnap.io/
• http://www.pexels.com/
• https://unsplash.com/grid

Flickr ( https://www.flickr.com ) also offers a great database of free images. You can use the search tool and then filter by copyright types:

• Images under "Commercial use & mods allowed" are free but attribution is required. This means you'll have to link to their author and to the License page. if you've modified the image, you also have to specify it
• Images under "No known copyright restrictions" are in the public domain or universal commons (CC0 1.0 Universal) and no attribution is required.

• May I add to the list of site: free-images.com imagefree.com/en freepik.com –  Imageree Commented Jul 27, 2022 at 23:04

In order to use images in your thesis you need to know who made them so that you can properly credit them, regardless of the issue of copyright. Proper accreditation is probably a more significant issue for your thesis than complying with copyright laws since failure to properly credit images including in your thesis is plagarism .

Since you will need to identify the original creator of each piece anyway, I would suggest you rely much more on what you learn through this route than anything Google tells you.

I think, if you guide yourself by the creative commons it could get easier but Im not aware of how your contry takes this online practices so you might want to check that

This is an article that helped me a lot some weeks ago with free photos and images ready to be used, some shared under the creative commons other freely shared by their owners

https://www.shopify.com/blog/17156388-22-awesome-websites-with-stunning-free-stock-images

There are a few sites which allows you to use images copyright free. Just note that you cannot re-sell those images.

Follow this

Another royalty free stock image site is: http://www.sxc.hu/

I would also suggest take pictures of your own. You can pose for yourself or ask family or friend.

• 2 I'm not sure OP would be interested in the "pose for yourself" option you mentioned; can you elaborate on how that helps them? –  Mad Jack Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 21:55
• Pose for yourself if a model is required. Your thesis will look much more credible if the pictures are also created by you. –  user3108698 Commented Jul 2, 2015 at 23:17
• 3 «royalty free» is not what the OP meant. also, this section of the legal information section looks fishy: «Freeimages cannot be held responsible for any copyright violations, and cannot guarantee the legality of the Images stored in its system. If you want to make sure, always contact the photographers.» –  henning no longer feeds AI Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 9:03

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Swiftie’s ‘Cruel Summer’ Concert Getaway Results in Duke Time Off Photo Prize

Mary Martin, Duke Hospital Chief Operating Officer, bonded with her 11-year-old daughter at the Taylor Swift concert in Amsterdam

Anyone who emailed Mary Martin during the first week of July received an automatic reply that hinted at the Duke Hospital Chief Operating Officer’s level of devotion to why she would not be replying any time soon.

“ Don't Blame Me but you know All Too Well that my daughter is a huge Taylor Swift fan,” the out-of-office email read. “Thus, we shall be celebrating this Cruel Summer by seeing Ms. Swift in Amsterdam July 2-8.  I mean no Bad Blood but I will be difficult to reach during this time. If any Sparks Fly while I am out, just Shake It Off or reach out to The Man , David Gallagher, for any urgent needs.

“Here's to Never Grow ing Up and living our Wildest Dreams .”

She even posted it on LinkedIn before she left for the trip.

“I had several people tell me they were going to send me an email at work just so they could get that response back,” Martin said.

The weeklong trip was the culmination of a year’s worth of planning and a newfound determination to live life to its fullest.

Martin’s photo from the concert in Amsterdam on July 5 led to Martin winning the next prize in the annual Duke Time Off photo campaign. For her photo, Martin will receive a 24-can cooler courtesy of Duke University Stores.

Martin and her two daughters have been major Taylor Swift fans for years. She took her oldest daughter, Julia, to Swift’s “The Red Tour” in 2014 when Julia was 10. She took both Julia and her youngest daughter, Ava, to Swift’s “Reputation Stadium Tour” in 2018 when Julia was 16 and Ava was 6.

Last year, amid all the hype for Swift’s record-setting Eras Tour , Ava began hinting that she’d like to attend – if not in the U.S, then maybe in Europe.

“Oh, OK. That’s a reasonable request. Whatever,” Martin jokingly told her.

But Martin also knew it would be an incredible mother-daughter experience if she could pull it off. And three years removed from a colon cancer diagnosis , Martin has a new appreciation for the importance of seizing the moment.

“My whole attitude has changed to, ‘It's all about experiences, and you never know what could happen, so go while you can,’” Martin said.

Martin also admits she needs to be better about setting an example for why it’s valuable to refresh and recharge.

“As leaders, we have to model taking time off,” Martin said, “because we’re pretty bad at doing that.”

And if it involved an overseas trip with 11-year-old Ava to see Swift, why not?

Martin’s brother, Dominic, happens to live in the Netherlands, so seeing one of Swift’s three Amsterdam performances worked out perfectly. Dominic was lucky enough to snag regular-price tickets through the Ticketmaster lottery, and all three attended the concert sporting outfits that reflected various Swift eras.

“It was really awesome,” Martin said. “I think she is such a good role model for young women, and it was just such a bonding experience.”

Ava apparently thought so, too. She almost started crying at the concert because she was so happy to be there. And she already has started hinting that Taylor Swift is playing a concert in Vancouver on Martin’s birthday later this year.

“I’m like, ‘Honey, no. We’re done,’” Martin said, laughing. “But I appreciated her angling for it.”

How to share your 2024 summer pictures:

• Post and tag a photo on  Twitter ,  Instagram  or  Facebook  with the  #DukeTimeOff  hashtag and tag Working@Duke as well.
• In your post, share what you’re doing with your time away from work and why it’s special.
• Remember to include  #DukeTimeOff and tag Working@Duke in your post, so we see your snapshots on social media.
• If you’re not on social media or prefer to share your picture another way, upload your picture  here .

We welcome and encourage frequent submissions (there’s even a prize for a shutterbug), but only the first picture in a series of pictures will be entered whenever one submission contains multiple images. Collage photographs and videos are not eligible for prizes.

During the campaign , the Working@Duke editorial team will award Duke-themed merchandise from Duke University Stores .

All eligible pictures taken and shared throughout the course of the campaign – May 22, 2024, through Aug. 4, 2024 – will be in the running for these grand prizes:

• A “Classic Package for Two” ($425 value) at the  Washington Duke Inn , which includes a king or double/double room for one night and full breakfast for two in the Vista Room or room service, courtesy of the Washington Duke Inn. Sunday brunch is not eligible.
• A tour of the Duke Lemur Center’s Natural History Museum for up to five people with museum curator, Dr. Matt Borths. The collection is one of the rarest fossil primate collections in the world. Borths and his team will give the lucky winners a behind the scenes look at the collection and let them try their hand at fossil prep work.

Send story ideas, shout-outs and photographs by writing  [email protected] .

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