Please see Copyright Essentials for general information on what copyright is and how long it lasts for.
Copyright
There are several exceptions in copyright law that allow you to use a work still in copyright to research, such as the exceptions for criticism, review and quotation, and text and data mining. For more information about these and other copyright exceptions, see Copyright Essentials.
If you are creating PowerPoint presentations to communicate your research remember to use the brand templates, and you will also find a bank of photographic images that you can use in the Brand Portal.
Copyright and your thesis
Ownership of copyright in the thesis Student ownership of Intellectual Property (IP) is also detailed by the Code of Practice for Research (PDF - 382 KB). In short, the Code confirms that students will automatically own their own work unless they are working as staff members, the items were created jointly with staff members, they were funded by UOB, or they were engaged in an activity which had IP ownership already assigned to a different party.
Students who create Research Publications are not automatically subject to the terms of that Research Publications Policy (DOCX - 96 KB), but they can opt in if they wish. Opting into the Policy ensures outputs are disseminated as widely and openly as possible to maximise their visibility and availability, potentially creating a greater impact.
If your work has been funded make sure you establish who owns your work with your funder.
Using the works of others in your thesis
You will need to ensure that any content in your thesis that was created by another person is either:
- covered by a copyright exception
- made available under a licence
- no longer in copyright
- or have the relevant permissions in place for using it within your thesis that will become publicly accessible online. For a number of limited reasons you may be able to restrict access to your thesis for a set period of time, more information about this can be found at Restricting access to your thesis.
Copyright Essentials offers further information around all these points.
Using your own published items in your thesis
You may wish to publish parts of your thesis as book chapters or journal articles before you submit your final thesis. Before publishing, we recommend looking at the University’s Research Publications Policy (DOCX - 96 KB) and our information about Publishing Open Access, as these may help you to retain your copyright in your work and enable you to publish Open Access at no cost to yourself. You may have already published articles that you want to include too. As part of the publication process, you may be asked to assign your copyright over to the publisher or provide them with an exclusive licence for the work. Either of these two options will mean that you need permission from the publisher to include text from that work within your thesis.
It is important you read the terms of your publishing agreement closely to ensure you are aware of the rights you assign and how they impact on your use of the material within your thesis. Many publishers have information on their webpages about including your own works published with them within a thesis.
If the work has been published under a Creative Commons licence, then you can follow the terms of that licence to reproduce the item within your thesis. Use of parts of the article within your thesis may be covered by copyright exceptions.
You may wish to enter negotiation with your publisher if you are uncomfortable with any of the rights being signed over. If you find the terms of your publishing contract unclear, please contact copyright@contacts.bham.ac.uk for guidance.
Key things to check
- Are you assigning the publisher the copyright in the publication or providing them with an exclusive licence?
- Will you be able to make the publication available under a Creative Commons licence?
- What does the publisher’s website say about re-using your publications with them in your thesis?
For more information, see Copyright and publishing.