phd dissertation copyright

• 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You must upload any permission letters in ETD Administrator as an  Administrative Document  titled “Permission Letter – Do Not Publish.”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.

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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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

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.
• << Previous: Discoverability, Embargo, and the Scholarly Conversation
• Next: Open Access Images >>
• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 10:43 AM
• URL: https://libguides.pratt.edu/thesisguide

Dissertations, Doctoral Projects, and Theses: Copyright

Who owns copyright in my dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis after it is published in digitalgeorgetown and proquest.

You own the copyright in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis from the moment it is fixed in a tangible form, such as saved as a digital file. Nothing in the submission process to ProQuest or DigitalGeorgetown changes the ownership status of your work. As the copyright owner, you have the exclusive right to copy and distribute your work. When you submit your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis, you will grant limited rights to Georgetown University and ProQuest so they can make your work available online.

DigitalGeorgetown

When you sign the Electronic Thesis, Doctoral Project & Dissertation (ETD) Release , you grant a non-exclusive license to Georgetown University to make your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis available online in the University's Institutional Repository, DigitalGeorgetown .

As part of the submission process through the  ProQuest ETD Administrator , you will grant ProQuest a non-exclusive license to make your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis available online in its subscription databases. For a fee, you may choose to make your work available open access on proquest.com .

Do I need to register my copyright?

Registering your copyright with the Copyright Office is not required for your work to be protected by copyright, but it is required if you ever need to enforce your rights through litigation. If you are considering registering your copyright, read more on our Copyright Registration page.

What do I do if I have used materials created by others (text, images, data, charts, etc.) in my work?

While there are unlikely to be any copyright concerns when third-party materials are shared only with your committee, after you submit your work to the Graduate School and it becomes available in DigitalGeorgetown to anyone with internet access, you must consider whether you are infringing any copyrights by making third-party works freely available. Both the DigitalGeorgetown release form and the ProQuest submission form require you to certify that you have obtained any necessary permissions for materials in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis.

If the materials you are using are in the public domain, have a Creative Commons license, or are fair uses, you may use them without permission from the copyright owner. In addition to the pages linked below, you may find our Copyright Videos useful to better understand your rights and responsibilities when using third-party materials in your work.

Public Domain

Materials in the public domain are not protected by copyright law, and therefore may be used freely. “Public domain” has a defined meaning under copyright law and does not mean materials publicly available on the internet. While there are several ways that a work may enter the public domain, the most likely is that copyright protection has expired. For 2022, anything published before 1927 can be used freely. Read more about the public domain on our Public Domain page.

Creative Commons

Some materials have a Creative Commons or other open license that allows materials to be reused with few or no restrictions. For materials found online, check the website’s terms and conditions to see whether the work may be used for noncommercial educational purposes.

Fair use permits the use of limited portions of a third-party work in a new work without permission or license fees. Absent unusual circumstances, properly cited direct quotations in your work will qualify as a fair use. For the use of other works, you will need to analyze the four fair use factors to determine whether your use is fair. Fair use determinations are subjective, fact-specific, and not completely risk-free since users and rights holders may disagree on whether a potential use is fair. To learn more about fair use, visit our Fair Use page.

If there are any materials in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis that are not public domain, Creative Commons, or fair use, you may be able to request permission to use them in your work. To learn more, visit our Requesting Permission page. Another option is to remove the copyrighted material from your work before submitting it through the ProQuest submission portal. You should note where any material in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis was redacted and describe what information has been removed.

Where can I get more information about copyright and my dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis?

• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis (2014) - overview from ProQuest
• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis: Ownership, Fair Use, and Your Rights and Responsibilities (2013) - detailed manual by Kenneth Crews
• If you have questions about copyright and your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis, contact [email protected] .
• For questions about DigitalGeorgetown, contact [email protected] .

Copyright on Campus: Theses & Dissertations

• Introduction
• Copyright Law Basics
• Public Domain
• Theses & Dissertations
• Author Rights
• Showing Movies in Class and on Campus
• Copyright & Data Management
• Copyright in Special Collections
• Open Education

Publisher Policies

Students often receive mixed messages when it comes to including a published paper in a dissertation, or publishing from the dissertation beyond graduation. Both of these scenarios are common and familiar to publishers, but there might be specific guidelines or requirements such as:

• Be transparent. Include a brief explanation when you submit your publication. More often, journals use plagiarism detection software; letting them know your work is out there and publicly available will help sidestep any questions.
• Include a citation to the published work in your thesis or dissertation, and/or a citation to the thesis/dissertation in the resulting publication.
• Specific rules for formatting.
• Resource: Publisher Policies MIT Libraries has compiled a list of major publishers with links to relevant policies

Reusing Material

Theses and dissertations often use charts, graphs, images, and quotes from other journal articles, books, or websites. When doing this, be aware that most content is protected by copyright, though it's likely fine for you to use these materials if you can do one of the following:

• Use public domain content. If you are including factual data presented in a straightforward way (e.g., a simple bar graph or pie chart showing the results of an experiment), it's very likely the figure does not meet the minimum threshold for creatively and is not protected by copyright.
• Use openly licensed content. Open access journal articles and books, as well as other media labeled with a Creative Commons license, 
• Decide your use is "fair." Fair use is a specific provision within U.S. Copyright Law that allows for limited use of in-copyright material without seeking permission. In general, quotations from the work of others should be no longer than is necessary to support the scholarly point you wish to make. 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. More on fair use .
• If you're not sure about relying on fair use, you can often seek permission. Most of the time, this means navigating to the publisher's website or a journal article page and finding a link to "rights" or "permissions." Many publishers allow graduate students to use content without charge, with the understanding that if you publish your work formally in future, you may need to obtain permission again and pay a fee. It's a good idea to get permission in writing, but even an email is sufficient.

From Dissertation to Publication - FAQ on Your Rights as Author

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.

Who owns copyright in work produced as part of a team or in a lab?

Whenever a group undertakes a project or research, it is best to have a discussion up front, including the faculty advisor or chair, to clarify how copyright, patents and other intellectual property will be managed and who will retain and manage rights for all portions of the project. Be sure to consider not only publications arising from the project, but also data sets, software, websites, user interfaces, specifications, and any other outputs. It is always best to make sure that faculty make clear to graduate students and others working for them how research outputs will be owned or used in order to avoid confusion. In circumstances where grant funds or University funding is significantly invested in the project or research, other ownership interests may be at play, which should be discussed and understood.

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 the U.S. Copyright Office circular " Copyright Basics ". The benefits of registration are outlined on Page 7.

Registration can be completed online directly (for a fee of $45) through the Copyright Office website  or through ProQuest (for a fee of $55) who will register the copyright for you and in your name.

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.

Why do I have two publishing agreements to review and sign, and what do I need to understand about them?

University of Florida dissertations are distributed by both ProQuest/UMI and the UF Libraries. Both will make your work available and preserve it for the future (ProQuest through its Dissertations and Theses database and print sales if you choose to allow that, and the UF Libraries through its institutional repository, the IR@UF ). In return for those services, both ProQuest and the UF Libraries require you to certify that the work is your own and that you are not infringing the rights of others. These agreements also provide a mechanism for all parties to recognize your rights as an author.  

Please note, by signing these agreements you still retain copyright, including the right to publish your work; the licenses you give to ProQuest/UMI and to the UF Libraries does not preclude publishing any part of your dissertation in another form or prevent you from transferring your copyright to some other party at a later date. A license is a permission you give to others to use your work in ways that would otherwise not be permitted by copyright law; they are not a transfer of your copyright.

The agreement with UF Libraries requires that you give a license to UF to put your dissertation in the IR@UF and distribute it in a way that allows other scholars to read it and use it for non-commercial purposes, as long as they do not make changes to your work and always give you credit. This license is designed to enable scholarship and to protect you from plagiarism. The agreement with ProQuest/UMI  grants ProQuest the non-exclusive right to reproduce and disseminate your work according to the conditions you elect in the agreement, including whether to make your work available after a specified embargo period and whether to make it available open access. 

Both publishing agreements allow students to elect to make their dissertations available immediately or after a specific limited period of time known as an embargo. An embargo may be appropriate and desired when a student wants to allow time to explore publishing part of it in other forms, if the dissertation contains material for which a patent might be sought, or if it includes other sensitive or confidential information.

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 PubMed Central, arXiv, or the IR@UF. University of Florida policy is for all new dissertations to be available open access through the IR@UF, either immediately or after an embargo period. 

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.

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Graduate Studies

Thesis and dissertation deposit information resources, should i copyright my dissertation.

Paul Royster , University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow

Paul Royster

Date of this Version

1. Your dissertation (and any other creative work) is already automatically copyright in your name as soon as it assumes "fixed form," i.e., as soon as it is written. It's publication (or deposit) in ProQuest's dissertations database or in the UNL DigitalCommons provides an independently verified date of record. So— No, you do not need to copyright your dissertation; that happens already automatically.

2. ProQuest asks if my dissertation is already or previously copyrighted. What does that mean? Do I answer yes or no? Sometimes, on rare occasions, a graduate degree is awarded based on a document that has already been published (and copyrighted) before it is deposited as an official dissertation. If that is the case, answer "yes." Otherwise (and normally), the answer should be "no."

3. ProQuest asks if I wish for them to register the copyright in my dissertation; what does that mean? Copyrights can be (but are not required to be) "registered" with the U.S. Copyright Office. This used to be required to get the protection of copyright for the full term, but that is no longer the case. Copyright belongs to the author automatically for the full 95-year term (currently) whether it is registered or not. What is the point of registering? If you find someone has infringed on your copyright and you want to sue them and collect monetary damages, you can only collect damages back to the date of the official registration. You can stop them from infringing, but you cannot collect damages for infringement that happened prior to the registration date. Is there a cut-off for registering? No, you can register your copyright at any time. You can register copyright yourself: Basic registration fee is $35 if done online, $65 if done on paper. ProQuest's charge for doing it for you at the time of deposit is $75. The United States Copyright Office is @ http://www.copyright.gov/ Registration, however, does not guarantee a work's copyright. For example, the Copyright Office might register your claim to copyright of a document that is actually taken from other (already copyrighted) sources or material that is legally in the public domain. In order for copyright to be valid, the material has to be legally subject to copyright, and registration does nothing for that one way or another.

So, should I have ProQuest register copyright for me? Short answer: for an academic dissertation, probably not. ( But it's your money; better to spend it on that than to blow it on drugs, tattoos, and Nicki Minaj downloads. )

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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.)
• Acknowledgements
• 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

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  https://guides.lib.uci.edu/gradmanual/previously-published-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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Copyright and your PhD thesis

Information on copyright as it relates to your thesis. Please also see page on Copyright and your research publications.

As the author you normally own the copyright in your thesis, apart from any work by others you may have included (e.g., figures, images, quotes). This is the general position at UCL.

There are some possible exceptions to this principle; for example, if you receive external funding for your PhD, in some cases the terms of IP ownership arising from a project may be different. In such cases, you may be asked to assign your IP to UCL, so that UCL manages contractual arrangements on your behalf. 

Please see the Intellectual Property policy and related guidance  for more information.

You may wish to include materials from other people's work in your PhD. These may include quoted text, imagies, tables and graphs. You must exercise caution to avoid the risk of copyright infringement. The starting point is that you need permission to reuse someone else's work. By obtaining permission, you remove any risk. Be sure to retain your email correspondence as evidence that you have permission.

Version of thesis submitted for examination

You may be able to include materials without permission in the version of the thesis you submit for examination. In this case, you may be able to rely on the instruction and examination exception , which allows reuse of materials, as long as the amount is not excessive and as long as you acknowledge the source.

Final version of thesis on UCL Discovery

Following your viva, any corrections and submission of the final copy, your thesis will be publicly available on UCL Discovery . The examination exception will not apply in this case. You may still be able to rely on the quotation exception , which allows you to include limited amounts of materials in your thesis as long as the use is 'fair dealing' and the material included has already been made available to the public. There is no legal definition of "fair dealing" but these pointers may be helpful:

• Keep each quotation as brief as possible.
• Avoid anything which might damage the interests of the copyright owner.
• Ensure you acknowledge authors and sources correctly.

Take extra care when reproducing images. This is less likely to be covered by an exception and more likely to pose copyright issues. It is always safer to seek permission from the copyright owner rather than rely upon an exception.

The size of the audience is a significant factor in copyright risk. It is sometimes necessary to redact (remove) third party material at that stage or to embargo publication on UCL Discovery for copyright reasons.

Check that you still have the right to publish, that you have not already assigned the copyright to someone else or granted someone an exclusive licence.

You should look closely at the small print of any contract rather than rushing to sign and be prepared to negotiate specific clauses. Examine your options before agreeing to assign your copyright to a publisher. If you do decide to assign your copyright, you can still assert your "moral right" to be acknowledged as the author. You could consider striking out any clause which asks you to waive your "moral rights". For more information on publishing and your rights, please see Copyright and your research publications .

Creative Commons licences (CC licences) offer a convenient way of licensing your work for others to reuse when you choose to make your work available online. The CC licences are free to use and there is a choice of licences, some of which are more restrictive than others. Creative Commons licences require that you are acknowledged as the author of the work while licensing others to reuse it within the terms of the specific CC licence.

CC licences can be used to licence many types of content such as text, images, photographs, sound recordings and films. They are commonly used to license the reuse of research papers when the papers are made available under one of the accepted open access publication routes.

When you make your thesis open access on UCL Discovery, the CC BY-NC licence applies by default unless you choose a different option. This licence means that you allow others to download, share and even adapt content from your thesis, for any purpose other than commercial (i.e. not for financial gain or monetary compensation), as long as they acknowledge you as the author and indicate where changes are made. When you submit your thesis you will have the option to choose a more permissive licence (CC BY) or a more restrictive one that does not allow adaptations nor commercial reuse without your permission (CC BY-NC-ND). 

You can read more about CC licences on the Creative Commons website .

In order to avoid issues of self-plagiarism you must make sure that you have cited the original source correctly (your thesis for example) and acknowledged yourself as author. Where possible you should also provide a link. This applies not just to reproducing your own material, but also to ideas which you have previously published elsewhere. There could be different issues other than self-plagiarism. For example, if you are submitting a paper to a journal you should also check with the editor about the acceptability of including part of your thesis. Conversely, if you plan to include your previously published work in your PhD thesis you should check that this is acceptable for examination purposes with your supervisor. There may also be copyright issues to address if you have assigned copyright in your work to a journal publisher.

Please also see related guidance by the UCL Doctoral School .  

Copyright and your thesis: checklist 

When your thesis is made open access in UCL Discovery, anyone can access it via the internet. This is similar to publishing. If your thesis contains material for which you don't own the copyright ("third party copyright"), it is your responsibility to ensure that you have the right to make it available. Below are the steps you need to take.

Identify content where you are not the copyright owner, including:

• Your own published works where you have assigned copyright to a publisher
• Substantial amounts of text from books, journal articles, conference papers, websites, etc.
• Images, photographs, figures, tables or graphs
• Computer programs

This list may not be exhaustive.

Permission is not necessary where:

Your use is covered by a copyright exception

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 30 allows extracts to be used without permission as long as the use is "fair dealing" and you stay within the terms of the exception. Anything more than short quotations may not be fair dealing, in which case you will need permission.

Reproducing photographs, images, diagrams and other "artistic works" is less likely to be fair dealing. You should avoid using unique, iconic or high profile artistic works without permission.

A work is out of copyright

In the UK most work is protected for the life of the author plus 70 years. Rather than assuming, make sure that you check that it is really out of copyright. Some older unpublished works remain protected until January 2040. Read this post for more details from the UCL Copyright Blog.

You already have permission

If the third party work is licensed under a Creative Commons licence , or other terms of use (on a website for example) that allow a licensee (you) to make copies available publicly, you do not need permission.

In all other cases, you must seek permission. Otherwise, the copyright holder may ask you to remove your thesis from UCL Discovery or seek financial compensation.

Where you need to seek permission, it is better to start this process at an early stage. This will give you time to contact copyright holders and look for alternative materials if need be. It is better to do this when you are first gathering your research materials which you may wish to include in your thesis. You will have the necessary information to hand.

First identify the copyright holder. You may need to go to the original source. Look for the copyright symbol © followed by the name of the author or publisher. This appears in different places depending on the type of publication:

• Journal and conference papers  - at the bottom of the page or PDF
• Books  - on the reverse of the title page at the front of the book (but there may be separate copyright information next to images)
• Websites  - often at the bottom of the web page or on content-sharing sites such as YouTube or Flickr as part of the information on the specific item.

There is a list of resources to help you with identifying and contacting rights owners in the Copyright resources reading list under the heading: "Seeking Permission and Tracing Ownership".

If you cannot trace the copyright holder, it is important to assess the risk of reproducing the work - they may take legal action for unauthorised use and request financial compensation. You may wish to consider applying for a licence under the Government's Orphan Works scheme as a way of managing your liability.

If the third party work is in copyright, there is no licence or other form of permission and you are not sure that the "fair dealing" exception applies (see step 2) then you must request permission from the copyright holder. You may use the UCL template for seeking permission .

If the copyright holder is a publisher, send your request to the 'rights and permissions' department. It may save time to telephone them first to check you have the right department or email address. Do not leave this to the end of your writing-up period as publishers can take a long time to reply. If there is no reply, contact them again after 2-4 weeks.

Keep a copy of all request letters and replies.

It is important to store and organise all your documentation relating to permissions requests, such as letters and emails, for future reference.

If a publisher requires a fee for permission and you do not wish to pay it, or if they refuse permission, you must remove that content from the version of your thesis that will be made open access. Replace it with a reference or description and provide a link (URL) to the original work, if possible. You will then need to deposit two versions of your thesis in UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS): a complete version, and the version without the third party material.

Where permission has been granted, cite and reference the extract and add a statement next to the content, for example,." Image reproduced with permission of the rights holder, Springer. "

Copyright for PhD students booklet

This guide is aimed at UCL research students and is relevant to PhD, MA and undergraduate dissertations.

• Formatting Your Dissertation
• Introduction

Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

• Application for Degree
• Credit for Completed Graduate Work
• Ad Hoc Degree Programs
• Acknowledging the Work of Others
• Advanced Planning
• Dissertation Advisory Committee
• Dissertation Submission Checklist
• Publishing Options
• Submitting Your Dissertation
• English Language Proficiency
• PhD Program Requirements
• Secondary Fields
• Year of Graduate Study (G-Year)
• Master's Degrees
• Grade and Examination Requirements
• Conduct and Safety
• Financial Aid
• Non-Resident Students
• Registration

On this page:

Language of the Dissertation

Page and text requirements, body of text, tables, figures, and captions, dissertation acceptance certificate, copyright statement.

• Table of Contents

Front and Back Matter

Supplemental material, dissertations comprising previously published works, top ten formatting errors, further questions.

• Related Contacts and Forms

When preparing the dissertation for submission, students must follow strict formatting requirements. Any deviation from these requirements may lead to rejection of the dissertation and delay in the conferral of the degree.

The language of the dissertation is ordinarily English, although some departments whose subject matter involves foreign languages may accept a dissertation written in a language other than English.

Most dissertations are 100 to 300 pages in length. All dissertations should be divided into appropriate sections, and long dissertations may need chapters, main divisions, and subdivisions.

• 8½ x 11 inches, unless a musical score is included
• At least 1 inch for all margins
• Body of text: double spacing
• Block quotations, footnotes, and bibliographies: single spacing within each entry but double spacing between each entry
• Table of contents, list of tables, list of figures or illustrations, and lengthy tables: single spacing may be used

Fonts and Point Size

Use 10-12 point size. Fonts must be embedded in the PDF file to ensure all characters display correctly. 

Recommended Fonts

If you are unsure whether your chosen font will display correctly, use one of the following fonts: 

If fonts are not embedded, non-English characters may not appear as intended. Fonts embedded improperly will be published to DASH as-is. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that fonts are embedded properly prior to submission. 

Instructions for Embedding Fonts

To embed your fonts in recent versions of Word, follow these instructions from Microsoft:

• Click the File tab and then click Options .
• In the left column, select the Save tab.
• Clear the Do not embed common system fonts check box.

For reference, below are some instructions from ProQuest UMI for embedding fonts in older file formats:

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2010:

• In the File pull-down menu click on Options .
• Choose Save on the left sidebar.
• Check the box next to Embed fonts in the file.
• Click the OK button.
• Save the document.

Note that when saving as a PDF, make sure to go to “more options” and save as “PDF/A compliant”

To embed your fonts in Microsoft Word 2007:

• Click the circular Office button in the upper left corner of Microsoft Word.
• A new window will display. In the bottom right corner select Word Options . 
• Choose Save from the left sidebar.

Using Microsoft Word on a Mac:

Microsoft Word 2008 on a Mac OS X computer will automatically embed your fonts while converting your document to a PDF file.

If you are converting to PDF using Acrobat Professional (instructions courtesy of the Graduate Thesis Office at Iowa State University):  

• Open your document in Microsoft Word. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF tab at the top. Select "Change Conversion Settings." 
• Click on Advanced Settings. 
• Click on the Fonts folder on the left side of the new window. In the lower box on the right, delete any fonts that appear in the "Never Embed" box. Then click "OK." 
• If prompted to save these new settings, save them as "Embed all fonts." 
• Now the Change Conversion Settings window should show "embed all fonts" in the Conversion Settings drop-down list and it should be selected. Click "OK" again. 
• Click on the Adobe PDF link at the top again. This time select Convert to Adobe PDF. Depending on the size of your document and the speed of your computer, this process can take 1-15 minutes. 
• After your document is converted, select the "File" tab at the top of the page. Then select "Document Properties." 
• Click on the "Fonts" tab. Carefully check all of your fonts. They should all show "(Embedded Subset)" after the font name. 
•  If you see "(Embedded Subset)" after all fonts, you have succeeded.

The font used in the body of the text must also be used in headers, page numbers, and footnotes. Exceptions are made only for tables and figures created with different software and inserted into the document.

Tables and figures must be placed as close as possible to their first mention in the text. They may be placed on a page with no text above or below, or they may be placed directly into the text. If a table or a figure is alone on a page (with no narrative), it should be centered within the margins on the page. Tables may take up more than one page as long as they obey all rules about margins. Tables and figures referred to in the text may not be placed at the end of the chapter or at the end of the dissertation.

• Given the standards of the discipline, dissertations in the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Department of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning often place illustrations at the end of the dissertation.

Figure and table numbering must be continuous throughout the dissertation or by chapter (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.). Two figures or tables cannot be designated with the same number. If you have repeating images that you need to cite more than once, label them with their number and A, B, etc. 

Headings should be placed at the top of tables. While no specific rules for the format of table headings and figure captions are required, a consistent format must be used throughout the dissertation (contact your department for style manuals appropriate to the field).

Captions should appear at the bottom of any figures. If the figure takes up the entire page, the caption should be placed alone on the preceding page, centered vertically and horizontally within the margins.

Each page receives a separate page number. When a figure or table title is on a preceding page, the second and subsequent pages of the figure or table should say, for example, “Figure 5 (Continued).” In such an instance, the list of figures or tables will list the page number containing the title. The word “figure” should be written in full (not abbreviated), and the “F” should be capitalized (e.g., Figure 5). In instances where the caption continues on a second page, the “(Continued)” notation should appear on the second and any subsequent page. The figure/table and the caption are viewed as one entity and the numbering should show correlation between all pages. Each page must include a header.

Landscape orientation figures and tables must be positioned correctly and bound at the top so that the top of the figure or table will be at the left margin. Figure and table headings/captions are placed with the same orientation as the figure or table when on the same page. When on a separate page, headings/captions are always placed in portrait orientation, regardless of the orientation of the figure or table. Page numbers are always placed as if the figure were vertical on the page.

If a graphic artist does the figures, Harvard Griffin GSAS will accept lettering done by the artist only within the figure. Figures done with software are acceptable if the figures are clear and legible. Legends and titles done by the same process as the figures will be accepted if they too are clear, legible, and run at least 10 or 12 characters per inch. Otherwise, legends and captions should be printed with the same font used in the text.

Original illustrations, photographs, and fine arts prints may be scanned and included, centered between the margins on a page with no text above or below.

Use of Third-Party Content

In addition to the student's own writing, dissertations often contain third-party content or in-copyright content owned by parties other than you, the student who authored the dissertation. The Office for Scholarly Communication recommends consulting the information below about fair use, which allows individuals to use in-copyright content, on a limited basis and for specific purposes, without seeking permission from copyright holders.

Because your dissertation will be made available for online distribution through DASH , Harvard's open-access repository, it is important that any third-party content in it may be made available in this way.

Fair Use and Copyright 

What is fair use?

Fair use is a provision in copyright law that allows the use of a certain amount of copyrighted material without seeking permission. Fair use is format- and media-agnostic. This means fair use may apply to images (including photographs, illustrations, and paintings), quoting at length from literature, videos, and music regardless of the format. 

How do I determine whether my use of an image or other third-party content in my dissertation is fair use?  

There are four factors you will need to consider when making a fair use claim.

1) For what purpose is your work going to be used?

• Nonprofit, educational, scholarly, or research use favors fair use. Commercial, non-educational uses, often do not favor fair use.
• A transformative use (repurposing or recontextualizing the in-copyright material) favors fair use. Examining, analyzing, and explicating the material in a meaningful way, so as to enhance a reader's understanding, strengthens your fair use argument. In other words, can you make the point in the thesis without using, for instance, an in-copyright image? Is that image necessary to your dissertation? If not, perhaps, for copyright reasons, you should not include the image.  

2) What is the nature of the work to be used?

• Published, fact-based content favors fair use and includes scholarly analysis in published academic venues. 
• Creative works, including artistic images, are afforded more protection under copyright, and depending on your use in light of the other factors, may be less likely to favor fair use; however, this does not preclude considerations of fair use for creative content altogether.

3) How much of the work is going to be used?  

• Small, or less significant, amounts favor fair use. A good rule of thumb is to use only as much of the in-copyright content as necessary to serve your purpose. Can you use a thumbnail rather than a full-resolution image? Can you use a black-and-white photo instead of color? Can you quote select passages instead of including several pages of the content? These simple changes bolster your fair use of the material.

4) What potential effect on the market for that work may your use have?

• If there is a market for licensing this exact use or type of educational material, then this weighs against fair use. If however, there would likely be no effect on the potential commercial market, or if it is not possible to obtain permission to use the work, then this favors fair use. 

For further assistance with fair use, consult the Office for Scholarly Communication's guide, Fair Use: Made for the Harvard Community and the Office of the General Counsel's Copyright and Fair Use: A Guide for the Harvard Community .

What are my options if I don’t have a strong fair use claim? 

Consider the following options if you find you cannot reasonably make a fair use claim for the content you wish to incorporate:

• Seek permission from the copyright holder. 
• Use openly licensed content as an alternative to the original third-party content you intended to use. Openly-licensed content grants permission up-front for reuse of in-copyright content, provided your use meets the terms of the open license.
• Use content in the public domain, as this content is not in-copyright and is therefore free of all copyright restrictions. Whereas third-party content is owned by parties other than you, no one owns content in the public domain; everyone, therefore, has the right to use it.

For use of images in your dissertation, please consult this guide to Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media , which is a great resource for finding images without copyright restrictions. 

Who can help me with questions about copyright and fair use?

Contact your Copyright First Responder . Please note, Copyright First Responders assist with questions concerning copyright and fair use, but do not assist with the process of obtaining permission from copyright holders.

Pages should be assigned a number except for the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate . Preliminary pages (abstract, table of contents, list of tables, graphs, illustrations, and preface) should use small Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). All pages must contain text or images.  

Count the title page as page i and the copyright page as page ii, but do not print page numbers on either page .

For the body of text, use Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) starting with page 1 on the first page of text. Page numbers must be centered throughout the manuscript at the top or bottom. Every numbered page must be consecutively ordered, including tables, graphs, illustrations, and bibliography/index (if included); letter suffixes (such as 10a, 10b, etc.) are not allowed. It is customary not to have a page number on the page containing a chapter heading.

• Check pagination carefully. Account for all pages.

A copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC) should appear as the first page. This page should not be counted or numbered. The DAC will appear in the online version of the published dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

The dissertation begins with the title page; the title should be as concise as possible and should provide an accurate description of the dissertation. The author name and date on the DAC and title page should be the same. 

• Do not print a page number on the title page. It is understood to be page  i  for counting purposes only.

A copyright notice should appear on a separate page immediately following the title page and include the copyright symbol ©, the year of first publication of the work, and the name of the author:

© [ year ] [ Author’s Name ] All rights reserved.

Alternatively, students may choose to license their work openly under a  Creative Commons  license. The author remains the copyright holder while at the same time granting up-front permission to others to read, share, and (depending on the license) adapt the work, so long as proper attribution is given. (By default, under copyright law, the author reserves all rights; under a Creative Commons license, the author reserves some rights.)

• Do  not  print a page number on the copyright page. It is understood to be page  ii  for counting purposes only.

An abstract, numbered as page  iii , should immediately follow the copyright page and should state the problem, describe the methods and procedures used, and give the main results or conclusions of the research. The abstract will appear in the online and bound versions of the dissertation and will be published by ProQuest. There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 

• double-spaced
• left-justified
• indented on the first line of each paragraph
• The author’s name, right justified
• The words “Dissertation Advisor:” followed by the advisor’s name, left-justified (a maximum of two advisors is allowed)
• Title of the dissertation, centered, several lines below author and advisor

Dissertations divided into sections must contain a table of contents that lists, at minimum, the major headings in the following order:

• Front Matter
• Body of Text
• Back Matter

Front matter includes (if applicable):

• acknowledgements of help or encouragement from individuals or institutions
• a dedication
• a list of illustrations or tables
• a glossary of terms
• one or more epigraphs.

Back matter includes (if applicable):

• bibliography
• supplemental materials, including figures and tables
• an index (in rare instances).

Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the end of the dissertation in an appendix, not within or at the end of a chapter. If additional digital information (including audio, video, image, or datasets) will accompany the main body of the dissertation, it should be uploaded as a supplemental file through ProQuest ETD . Supplemental material will be available in DASH and ProQuest and preserved digitally in the Harvard University Archives.

As a matter of copyright, dissertations comprising the student's previously published works must be authorized for distribution from DASH. The guidelines in this section pertain to any previously published material that requires permission from publishers or other rightsholders before it may be distributed from DASH. Please note:

• Authors whose publishing agreements grant the publisher exclusive rights to display, distribute, and create derivative works will need to seek the publisher's permission for nonexclusive use of the underlying works before the dissertation may be distributed from DASH.
• Authors whose publishing agreements indicate the authors have retained the relevant nonexclusive rights to the original materials for display, distribution, and the creation of derivative works may distribute the dissertation as a whole from DASH without need for further permissions.

It is recommended that authors consult their publishing agreements directly to determine whether and to what extent they may have transferred exclusive rights under copyright. The Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) is available to help the author determine whether she has retained the necessary rights or requires permission. Please note, however, the Office of Scholarly Communication is not able to assist with the permissions process itself.

• Missing Dissertation Acceptance Certificate.  The first page of the PDF dissertation file should be a scanned copy of the Dissertation Acceptance Certificate (DAC). This page should not be counted or numbered as a part of the dissertation pagination.
• Conflicts Between the DAC and the Title Page.  The DAC and the dissertation title page must match exactly, meaning that the author name and the title on the title page must match that on the DAC. If you use your full middle name or just an initial on one document, it must be the same on the other document.  
• Abstract Formatting Errors. The advisor name should be left-justified, and the author's name should be right-justified. Up to two advisor names are allowed. The Abstract should be double spaced and include the page title “Abstract,” as well as the page number “iii.” There is no maximum word count for the abstract. 
•  The front matter should be numbered using Roman numerals (iii, iv, v, …). The title page and the copyright page should be counted but not numbered. The first printed page number should appear on the Abstract page (iii). 
• The body of the dissertation should be numbered using Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, …). The first page of the body of the text should begin with page 1. Pagination may not continue from the front matter. 
• All page numbers should be centered either at the top or the bottom of the page.
• Figures and tables Figures and tables must be placed within the text, as close to their first mention as possible. Figures and tables that span more than one page must be labeled on each page. Any second and subsequent page of the figure/table must include the “(Continued)” notation. This applies to figure captions as well as images. Each page of a figure/table must be accounted for and appropriately labeled. All figures/tables must have a unique number. They may not repeat within the dissertation.
• Any figures/tables placed in a horizontal orientation must be placed with the top of the figure/ table on the left-hand side. The top of the figure/table should be aligned with the spine of the dissertation when it is bound. 
• Page numbers must be placed in the same location on all pages of the dissertation, centered, at the bottom or top of the page. Page numbers may not appear under the table/ figure.
• Supplemental Figures and Tables. Supplemental figures and tables must be placed at the back of the dissertation in an appendix. They should not be placed at the back of the chapter. 
• Permission Letters Copyright. permission letters must be uploaded as a supplemental file, titled ‘do_not_publish_permission_letters,” within the dissertation submission tool.
•  DAC Attachment. The signed Dissertation Acceptance Certificate must additionally be uploaded as a document in the "Administrative Documents" section when submitting in Proquest ETD . Dissertation submission is not complete until all documents have been received and accepted.
• Overall Formatting. The entire document should be checked after all revisions, and before submitting online, to spot any inconsistencies or PDF conversion glitches.
• You can view dissertations successfully published from your department in DASH . This is a great place to check for specific formatting and area-specific conventions.
• Contact the  Office of Student Affairs  with further questions.

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• 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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Copyright in PhD thesis

A guide to copyright for PhD students preparing to submit for examination.

Primary page content

Introduction.

Copyright in theses is normally held by the author, so as the author you will own the copyright in your Goldsmiths thesis, unless you have made an agreement to transfer it, for example to a sponsor. 

When you submit your thesis for examination, Goldsmiths will ask you, as the copyright holder, for permission to make both the paper copy and a digital copy of your thesis available, in the library and online, and will provide forms for this purpose. This is because copyrights include the right to distribute the work. Digital theses from Goldsmiths are made available on the web, in Goldsmiths Research Online and in the British Library's collection of UK theses, EThOS, so are widely accessible to other researchers and the public.

The submission form includes options to limit access if you need to do that, one reason may be if you have included copyright material. The notes below explain more about provisions for the use of copyright material in digital theses.

Using copyright material in your thesis

If you have included copyright material belonging to someone else, called 3rd party copyright material , in your thesis, you will need to assess whether you need to get permission to include this material in the digital version of your thesis.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the primary UK legislation governing copyright, provides for the reproduction of limited amounts of copyright material under ‘fair dealing for criticism or review’ without permission so long as they are properly cited and, if images, are not cropped or altered. This 'fair dealing' exclusion is reasonably likely to apply to your use of 3rd party material such as extracts from publications such as books or journals, whether text or illustrations, in an academic doctoral thesis. Guidelines on what could reasonably be considered fair are given below. 

If you have included 3rd party copyright material which has not been published, for example photographs of art works in a gallery or copies of web documentation of a performance, or you are including a substantial amount or the whole of a work then you will need to seek permission from the copyright holder to include that in the copies of your thesis that you deposit in the library. Again, this is because copyrights include the right to distribute the work.

Please note that while students are being asked to make best efforts to seek permission to include third party copyright material in the electronic version of their thesis you will not be penalised if it is not possible to gain permission, either because permissions are not granted, or because it would either be too onerous or too expensive to obtain permissions. The outcome of your examination will not be affected in any way. No student will be required to make any payments to copyright holders for material they wish to include in their thesis. Also note that a different 'fair dealing' exception applies to the use of copyright material for the purpose of examination.

What you may use under provisions for quotation, or fair dealing for criticim or review

If the 3rd party copyright material within your thesis consists of a short quotation from a published work and you have acknowledged and referenced it adequately it will probably not be necessary to seek permission from the copyright holder. Copyright law does not define how much material can be reproduced for this purpose, however, authors’ and publishers’ associations and others provide useful guidelines on quantitative limits:

The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), an organisation that primarily represents artistic work rights holders, provides a Fact Sheet entitled ‘Use of Copyright Works for the Purpose of Review and Criticism.’ Although the Fact Sheet carries a disclaimer that its advice should not be regarded as constituting legal or other advice, it nevertheless neatly summarises the key requirements of ‘fair dealing for the purposes of criticism or review’ as outlined above and provides practical examples of ‘fair dealing’ reproduction of artistic works. In part:

If work is reproduced and used as the basis for criticism or review that use may be considered “fair dealing”. For example, if the work accompanies an article, which is a review or criticism and is directly commented on in the article, it would be ‘fair’ to reproduce that work’. However, the work must appear within the body of the article. Similarly, if an author of a written piece is expounding a theory about a particular work or an artistic movement and reproduces the work as an example of his theory, illustrating his meaning, this would also be considered “fair”.

The use of ‘comparative’ works may also be fair. For example, it probably would be “fair” to reproduce the work by artist “x” within an article reviewing the work of artist “y” if there is a sufficient link between the two works expounded in the review. It may be “fair” for example, to include the reproduction of a Braque painting in an article which is criticism of Picasso but also deals with the comparison or influences…

Using distorted, cropped or tinted images, additions, etc, or any treatment considered a derogatory treatment, cannot be considered “fair” in any context and may infringe moral rights and should be avoided…

All reproductions of copyright works which may be considered “fair” must be accompanied by sufficient and full acknowledgement (i.e. title of the work and the artist’s name). Reproductions not acknowledged or credited are NOT CONSIDERED “FAIR”…

If in doubt, it is best to seek permission . Ideally, you should seek permission to include 3rd party copyright material in your thesis as you go along rather than at the point of writing up your thesis. 

If you intend to include material that you yourself have published , e.g. journal articles , you need to check if the publisher will permit you to include these as part of your thesis. The easiest way to do this is by contacting the publisher directly and checking. Most publishers will permit this.

Publication permission seeking template

If you have assigned copyright to a publisher, e.g. for a journal article, and you wish to include this work within the electronic version of your thesis you need to check that this is permitted. This is a suggested wording you can use to contact your publisher:

I am the author of the following work published by (insert publisher's name): [Provide a full citation for your work] I wish to include this work within the electronic version of my thesis, which I am required to deposit in Goldsmiths University's online theses repository ( https://research.gold.ac.uk/ ). The repository is non-commercial and openly available to all. I would be grateful if you could advise if this will be acceptable.

How to seek permission to include 3rd party material

To seek permission to include 3rd party material within the electronic version of your thesis you need to contact the rights holder . This may be the author of a work, a publisher , an illustrator etc. In the case of material from books and journals your first course of action should be to contact the publisher. Many publishers give details on their web site of how to seek permission and who to contact. Look for information on rights/permissions/copyright clearance. If the publisher does not hold the rights to the work they should forward your enquiry to whoever does.

Once you have established who to contact you can use the template below to form the basis of a letter or e-mail to the rights holder asking permission to include the material in the electronic version of your thesis.

If the rights holder does not reply immediately you may choose to contact them again. However, note that you may not deem a lack of response as permission to go ahead.

3rd party permission seeking template

When contacting rights owners to seek permission to include their material within your thesis it is important that you are clear about what you are asking for. The following is a suggested wording that can be incorporated into letters/e-mails that you send to rights-holders:

I am contacting you to seek permission to include the following material within the electronic version of my PhD/MSc/MPhil (insert relevant level) thesis: [Provide full details of the material you intend to include] If you are not the rights holder for this material I would be grateful if you would advise me who to contact. The thesis will be made available within Goldsmiths University's online theses repository ( https://research.gold.ac.uk/ ). The repository is non-commercial and openly available to all.

What to do if permission is granted

If a copyright holder indicates that permission has been granted you should indicate this at the appropriate point in your thesis, e.g. 'Permission to reproduce this ... has been granted by...'. You should keep a copy of any letters or e-mails you received from rights holders.

What to do if permission is not granted

If you need to include 3rd party copyright material in your thesis and are unable to obtain permission or are asked to pay to do this you will not be able to make the full version of the thesis publicly available online. You need to select the option on the Thesis Access Declaration form to restrict access to the electronic version of your thesis because of copyright restrictions. However, you are still required to deposit an electronic copy of your thesis which will be held securely.

 When you come to deposit your thesis you have two options:

1. Deposit two copies - one the full version with all 3rd party retained, and a second edited version with this material removed. The edited electronic version will be made publicly available - they full version will not.

2. Deposit only the full version with 3rd party copyright material retained on CD-ROM/memory stick. This will not be made publicly available.

Other important information

Note that it may be necessary to restrict access to your thesis on the grounds that third party permissions have not been granted in addition to requesting an embargo in relation to, e.g. future publication of the thesis.

Help and advice

If in doubt about whether you need to get permission to include any material within your thesis it is always best to err on the side of caution and assume that you do. If you have specific queries you can send these to  gro (@gold.ac.uk) and the Goldsmiths Research Online staff will do their best to help you.

Find out more about the Research Degrees Examinations process , and download the forms to register for examinations .

Can I include my published papers in my dissertation?

Many graduate students publish their research prior to finalizing their thesis or dissertation. Indeed, in some fields, dissertations are comprised of one or more papers, with little other material.

It’s confusing, therefore, when you prepare to finish your thesis or dissertation, and suddenly realize that you might have signed away your copyright! If you don’t own the copyright to your work, can you in fact include the paper in your dissertation or thesis? Good question!

First, the University does not evaluate your dissertation or thesis for copyright issues. It’s up to you to assess copyright concerns with included content, from quotes and screenshots, to your own published papers.

When you write a paper, you are the copyright owner of the manuscript. If you wrote it with other people, then you and your co-authors are the joint copyright owners of the manuscript. At that point, each author can do whatever they want with their manuscript—including transferring the copyright to someone else, or retaining it.

When you publish a paper, almost all publishers require a publication contract . That publication contract specifies whether you keep your contract, transfer it, transfer some of the copyright rights, or all of them. You can, and should, negotiate to keep all the rights you will need, including the right to include your published paper in your thesis or dissertation. (It’s standard in all academic fields to acknowledge first publication, but the format depends on the field.) 

But what if you didn’t negotiate, and you transferred your copyright to the publisher? At this point, you have three real options. 

(1) Campus or Funder Open Access Policy. If your work was funded by a US federal government agency, or another funder with an open access requirement, then your rights to re-use the work will almost certainly be protected. Also, if one of your co-authors is a faculty member at an institution with an open access policy (such as the Open Access policy at UMass Amherst ), then you would have rights under the OA policy. The UMass OA policy was instituted by the Faculty Senate starting in 2016, so any papers published since then would be covered. The faculty member author needs to upload the paper to the campus repository (ScholarWorks) to perfect their claim under the OA policy. 

Some campuses include graduate students in their campus open access policy. At UMass, graduate students can opt in to the policy, but they must do so before publishing. You may have co-authors at other institutions, and if they have open access policies, you will probably be able to take advantage of your rights.

(2) Check your publication contract for possible rights. Many publishers specifically allow inclusion of papers in authors’ dissertations. You would need to look at your publishing agreement to see what it says. Your liaison librarians or the Copyright Education Service at the UMass Libraries can help you review those agreements and understand whether you have rights or not.

(3) Ask for permission to reprint. If you transferred the copyright, don’t have rights under an OA policy, and the publication contract you signed didn’t retain any rights for yourself, then you should probably ask for permission to reprint. The publisher may ask for a fee, depending on your field and the publication.

What about fair use? Fair use is a doctrine in copyright law that allows people to use third-party content without permission, so long as the use is a fair use (17 USC 107). (See the “fair use explainer” for more information.) All sorts of uses can be fair uses, depending on the specific facts. Fair uses can include quotations, personal copies for research, satires, indexing, and many other uses — but it always depends on the circumstances, and any of those uses might be infringing in some circumstances, and fair in others. While it is impossible to say definitively without knowing the specific circumstances, reprinting a published article in its entirety in a new work (such as a dissertation) would not usually be a good candidate for fair use.

Isn’t it just normal and expected? In some fields, it is quite conventional to use published papers as a chapter in a dissertation or thesis, either modified or as published. However, you should still check with your publisher (ideally before the work is published) to make sure you are both in agreement with this expectation.

The Library’s “Copyright Education Program” librarians are happy to talk with you if you have questions about your prior publications and your thesis or dissertation. Contact us for an appointment.

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Study Skills

Copyright for researchers: copyright and theses.

• Copyright introduction
• Authorship and IP
• 3rd party copyright
• Creative Commons
• Copyright and theses
• Copyright terminology

Why is this important?

Following a decision made by the Board of Graduate Studies at its meeting on 4 July 2017, from 1 October 2017 all PhD students will be required to deposit both a hard copy and an electronic copy of their thesis to the University Library. More information on the requirements to deposit your thesis can be found on the Office of Scholarly Communication webpages.

All PhD students will need to understand how copyright relates to their thesis. If you are a student at the University of Cambridge who is preparing a thesis for submission, you will need to consider both your own copyright in your work and any third party copyright material you have included in your thesis.

Third party copyright and your thesis

Copyright held by someone other than yourself is known as  third party copyright . If you are using material created by others in your thesis, you will need to investigate whether you should seek permission to include it. If you do include this material in your thesis, you must ensure you credit the copyright holder and the source. More information on third party copyright can be found on the Office of Scholarly Communication copyright webpages .

We recommend that you obtain permission to include material as you are working on your research rather than leaving clearances to the last minute. It can take time to ensure you have obtained the correct clearance and if you do not obtain permission to include the material, you may wish to investigate alternatives or redact the material in your final submission .

Different copyright rules apply to the hardbound copy of your thesis that is deposited in the library for reference and the electronic version of your thesis that is deposited in the Apollo repository . This is because the hardbound copy of your thesis is considered to be unpublished and the electronic version, if made available online, is published. For further information on what to clear and how to clear it, see the Office of Scholarly Communication's webpages  'Your hardbound thesis and third party copyright'  and 'Your e-thesis and third party copyright' .

University of Cambridge researchers own the copyright in their own work unless they are sponsored by an external party who may have rights over the material. If the researcher owns the copyright in their work they are free to make it available as they wish.

Depositing your thesis

Electronic deposit does not mean that the full text of the thesis will automatically be available. Students are given the choice of different access levels and must discuss their choice with their Supervisor, before uploading a signed access confirmation form [PDF] at the time the thesis is uploaded for deposit to Apollo. Access levels include the option to make a thesis available Open Access immediately or to embargo access for an initial 12 months, during which time the metadata and abstract of a thesis (but not the full text) will be findable in the repository. For further information on the different access levels and how they will be managed, see  t he dedicated page on the Office of Scholarly Communication website .

• Digital Thesis Submission System If you are ready to submit your electronic thesis you can do so via this link.

Copyright and theses by other authors

If you are including quotations from theses by other authors, you will need to check the copyright status of the work you are quoting, ensure you cite the work correctly and clear the quotation if necessary. If the thesis you are quoting from is an unpublished work, you are required under copyright law to contact the copyright holder to gain clearance to include the quotation in your thesis.

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Copyright and your PhD thesis

You are a PhD candidate and the completion of your dissertation is approaching. What to do next?

The copyright to your thesis lies with you, the author. However, the university has stipulated that your thesis must be included in the university's repository. You are also required to submit a number of paper copies to the university. This is a prerequisite for obtaining your doctorate, as stated in article 20 of the Leiden University PhD Regulations.  

In this way, your dissertation is made available in open access to anyone interested. You provide the university with your dissertation by means of a non-exclusive licence. Non-exclusive means that you can continue to freely make use of and decide over the copyright to your dissertation.

Your dissertation is a monograph

Do you want to publish your dissertation at a traditional publisher's? If so, it is possible to place an embargo on your dissertation. The embargo can last for 6, 12, 18 or 24 months. It is advisable to inform your publisher in advance about the obligation to submit the dissertation in the Leiden repository.

Your dissertation consists of a number of articles

Are you publishing an article that will later become part of your dissertation? In this case too, it is possible to place an embargo on each article. Please note that prior to publication, you should consult with the publisher and make it clear that your article a) will form part of your dissertation and b) will be published in open access in the Leiden repository. You cannot agree with the publisher that you will fully transfer the copyright and that the article may never be published in the Leiden repository. Have you received a contract for signature from the publisher regarding publication and are you unsure what will happen to your copyright and what this means for your dissertation? Send an email with the draft contract to [email protected]  and we will help you understand its content.

Have you completed your dissertation and do you want to publish one or more chapters as an article? An embargo of 6, 12, 18 or 24 months is possible. You can indicate this in the non-exclusive licence agreement that you sign with the university.

Submitting your dissertation

You can find more information about submitting the thesis, the licence agreement and other forms you need to fill in, the number of printed copies of the thesis you need to submit, compensation of printing expenses, and other information on our webpage Submitting your PhD dissertation .

How to tackle the PhD dissertation

Finding time to write can be a challenge for graduate students who often juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. Mabel Ho provides some tips to make the process less daunting

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Writing helps you share your work with the wider community. Your scholarship is important and you are making a valuable contribution to the field. While it might be intimidating to face a blank screen, remember, your first draft is not your final draft! The difficult part is getting something on the page to begin with. 

As the adage goes, a good dissertation is a done dissertation, and the goal is for you to find balance in your writing and establish the steps you can take to make the process smoother. Here are some practical strategies for tackling the PhD dissertation.

Write daily

This is a time to have honest conversations with yourself about your writing and work habits. Do you tackle the most challenging work in the morning? Or do you usually start with emails? Knowing your work routine will help you set parameters for the writing process, which includes various elements, from brainstorming ideas to setting outlines and editing. Once you are aware of your energy and focus levels, you’ll be ready to dedicate those times to writing.

While it might be tempting to block a substantial chunk of time to write and assume anything shorter is not useful, that is not the case. Writing daily, whether it’s a paragraph or several pages, keeps you in conversation with your writing practice. If you schedule two hours to write, remember to take a break during that time and reset. You can try:

• The Pomodoro Technique: a time management technique that breaks down your work into intervals
• Taking breaks: go outside for a walk or have a snack so you can come back to your writing rejuvenated
• Focus apps: it is easy to get distracted by devices and lose direction. Here are some app suggestions: Focus Bear (no free version); Forest (free version available); Cold Turkey website blocker (free version available) and Serene (no free version). 

This is a valuable opportunity to hone your time management and task prioritisation skills. Find out what works for you and put systems in place to support your practice. 

• Resources on academic writing for higher education professionals
• Stretch your work further by ‘triple writing’
• What is your academic writing temperament?

Create a community

While writing can be an isolating endeavour, there are ways to start forming a community (in-person or virtual) to help you set goals and stay accountable. There might be someone in your cohort who is also at the writing stage with whom you can set up a weekly check-in. Alternatively, explore your university’s resources and centres because there may be units and departments on campus that offer helpful opportunities, such as a writing week or retreat. Taking advantage of these opportunities helps combat isolation, foster accountability and grow networks. They can even lead to collaborations further down the line.

• Check in with your advisers and mentors. Reach out to your networks to find out about other people’s writing processes and additional resources.
• Don’t be afraid to share your work. Writing requires constant revisions and edits and finding people who you trust with feedback will help you grow as a writer. Plus, you can also read their work and help them with their editing process.
• Your community does not have to be just about writing!  If you enjoy going on hikes or trying new coffee shops, make that part of your weekly habit.  Sharing your work in different environments will help clarify your thoughts and ideas.

Address the why

The PhD dissertation writing process is often lengthy and it is sometimes easy to forget why you started. In these moments, it can be helpful to think back to what got you excited about your research and scholarship in the first place. Remember it is not just the work but also the people who propelled you forward. One idea is to start writing your “acknowledgements” section. Here are questions to get you started:

• Do you want to dedicate your work to someone? 
• What ideas sparked your interest in this journey? 
• Who cheered you on? 

This practice can help build momentum, as well as serve as a good reminder to carve out time to spend with your community. 

You got this!

Writing is a process. Give yourself grace, as you might not feel motivated all the time. Be consistent in your approach and reward yourself along the way. There is no single strategy when it comes to writing or maintaining motivation, so experiment and find out what works for you. 

Suggested readings

• Thriving as a Graduate Writer by Rachel Cayley (2023)
• Destination Dissertation by Sonja K. Foss and William Waters (2015)
• The PhD Writing Handbook by Desmond Thomas (2016).

Mabel Ho is director of professional development and student engagement at Dalhousie University.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,  sign up for the Campus newsletter .

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Teen walks at graduation after completing doctoral degree at 17

Dorothy Jean Tillman II was 10 when she entered college as a freshman.

A teenager from Chicago walked in her graduation ceremony this month after earning her doctoral degree at 17.

Dorothy Jean Tillman II told " Good Morning America " that she was homeschooled in her early years before entering college at age 10.

In 2020, she said she earned a Master of Science degree, and then, one year later, at age 15, was accepted into the Doctorate of Behavioral Health Management program at Arizona State University.

In December 2023, at 17, Tillman successfully defended her dissertation to earn her doctoral degree in integrated behavioral health from ASU's College of Health Solutions.

On May 6, she walked at ASU's spring commencement ceremony.

Tillman told "GMA" she has always held education in such high regard in part due to her family's background.

"People in my life like my grandmother, who was part of the Civil Rights movement, she of course harped on the importance of education and consistently learning something always," Tillman said. "But the way I always held education so high on my own, aside from being raised that way, was finding different things to be educated about."

She continued, "I feel like that urge to learn something new just never didn't exist for me."

Teen who battled leukemia and homelessness as a child graduates college at 18

Dr. Lesley Manson, a clinical associate professor at ASU, told "GMA" that Tillman is the youngest person in school history to earn a doctoral degree in integrated behavioral health.

Manson said she oversaw Tillman's dissertation for the doctoral program offered through ASU Online.

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During her studies, Tillman wrote a journal article of her dissertation and completed an internship at a university student health center, according to Manson.

"She really led change and worked on different forms of management to really reduce healthcare stigma and improve that student population there to be able to enter and accept student health services," she said of Tillman. "It was wonderful to see her and help her navigate some of those personal and professional interactions and grow through those experiences."

Manson described Tillman as an "inquisitive" and "innovative" student, and emphasized just how rare it is to accomplish what she has so far.

"It's a wonderful celebration ... but this is still something so rare and unique," she said. "She has innovative ideas and motivation, which is wonderful, and truly, I think what is inspiring is that she embodies that meaning of being a true leader."

Manson said she hopes Tillman continues to inspire people with her love of learning, saying, "That curiosity is always there, and I think all learners come with that, but it's great to be able to see it in someone so young as well."

Her inspiration and how she gives back to community

Tillman said her own journey wouldn't be possible without the support of her mom, who she said is one of her biggest motivators.

"Seeing my mother consistently work so hard to continuously uphold our family's legacy, and be that person that everyone was able to go to, if they needed anything ... always seeing [her] like [a] 'wonder woman' definitely made me want to grow up [into] an accomplished person," she said.

An advocate for education, Tillman is also the founder and CEO of a leadership institute that emphasizes the arts and STEM.

"I feel like adding art and putting a focus on it throughout science, technology, engineering and math makes the kids excited to learn all those things," she said. "And it opens them up to all of the possibilities and all the knowledge provided in that area of just STEM."

'Super dad' graduates with master's while working 3 jobs

As for her plans after graduation, Tillman said she is "just like any other teenager, still figuring out what my specific dreams and goals are."

"I'm really just grateful that the world is my oyster, and that I've done so much so young," she said. "And I have time to kind of think that through."

Tillman added that she hopes young people will take away from her story that it's OK to continually figure out what you want to do in life.

"Always remember that everyone has points in their life where they feel like they're figuring it out," she said. "And so figuring things out, not knowing what you want isn't a bad thing. But making the choice not to sit down and try to figure it out is."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional quotes from Tillman since its original publish date of May 13, 2024.

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Home > ETD > Doctoral > 5554

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

A phenomenological study of the lived experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities and their participation in postsecondary job training programs: a qualitative study.

Jami Vickers Granberry , Liberty University Follow

School of Education

Doctor of Philosophy in Education (PhD)

Susan K. Stanley

inclusion, higher education, intellectual disabilities, postsecondary education, job training

Disciplines

Higher Education | Special Education and Teaching

Recommended Citation

Granberry, Jami Vickers, "A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences of Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities and Their Participation in Postsecondary Job Training Programs: A Qualitative Study" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects . 5554. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5554

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the lived experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in an inclusive postsecondary education program. The theories that guided this study are Oliver’s theory on the social model of disability and Vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism. This study used a transcendental research design and employed the use of purposeful sampling to select participants who have all experienced the same phenomenon. There were 10 participants who have all had the same experience of attending an inclusive postsecondary education program. The setting took place at P.C.C. in the C.A. program. The central research question asked, what are the lived experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities enrolled in inclusive postsecondary career and technical training programs located on a college campus? Data collection types included interviews, journal prompts, and focus groups. A system of coding along with epoché, horizontalization of data, and structural descriptions were used for data analysis to determine major themes from the data collected. The trustworthiness, results, and findings of the study are also discussed. Findings included five themes and two sub-themes. The five themes were education and career aspirations, concept of inclusion, inclusivity and social engagement, campus engagement and support networks, and sense of belonging. The two sub-themes were career and professional development and real-world application and practice. The dissertation then moves into an overall discussion of the interpretation of the findings, the implications of the study, limitations, delimitations, and recommendations for future research. The dissertation ends with a conclusion that summarizes the full study.

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