creative commons license dissertation

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Submit and publish your thesis.

• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
• Thesis Defences
• Deadlines and Fees
• Formatting in MS Word
• Formatting in LaTeX
• Making Thesis Accessible
• Thesis Embargo
• Review and Release
• Your Rights as an Author
• Re-using Third Party Materials
• Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Turning Thesis into an Article
• Turning Thesis into a Book
• Other Venues of Publication

Choosing a Creative Commons license for your thesis

When submitting your thesis online, you can choose to apply a Creative Commons (CC) license to your work. This section explains what CC licenses are, how to choose and apply them to your thesis.

What is a Creative Commons License?

A Creative Commons license allows you, as a copyright holder, to give others permission to use and share your work online while still giving you credit.

Copyright and CC licenses are like siblings – related but with some important distinctions as CC licenses are built on top of copyright. CC licenses express very clearly: "I am the copyright owner, but you can do anything with my thesis (under these conditions)”

Copyright can protect your creativity and original ideas from uses you do not consent to. However, copyright can also be too restrictive.  For example, if someone wants to use and share your thesis, they will need your permission first in most cases. This permission-seeking process can take up time and be a barrier to your intellectual output reaching a wider audience.

With CC licenses, you can refine the extent of your copyright to allow others to re-use your work , at anytime and anywhere. Your moral rights of attribution will remain and you can continue re-using, sharing and publishing your thesis .

A CC license lasts for as long as copyright for the work exists, the work will then belong to the public domain 70* years after the creator’s death in Canada.

How does each CC license differ?

Every CC license has different components, according to the following four types of license elements, which include Attribution, ShareAlike, NonCommercial , and NoDerivatives . These work as specific attributes of Creative Common licenses and are shown below:

These elements can be used in six different ways to create the license combos that range from the most open (CC BY) to the most restrictive (CC BY-NC-ND):

Source: “ How to attribute Creative Commons Photos ” by Foter. Licensed under a  CC-BY-SA 3.0 license

Why should I consider a Creative Commons License?

Some pros of choosing a cc license for your thesis are:.

• A fully copyright-protected thesis despite being available online, cannot be reproduced or redistributed for future students’ research. Adding a CC license will facilitate better sharing of your work , increase the readership of your thesis, advance the scholarly discourse in your field, and contribute to the public good . (From CC Licensing your dissertations, Creative Commons )
• This short video by BCcampus also illustrates how CC-licensed materials can advance knowledge sharing .
• Creative commons licenses are machine-readable , which means that search engines can detect and display your work accordingly.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Once granted, the CC license cannot be revoked. The reason for this is that if you allow someone to re-use your work and then revoke permission, this could potentially be exploited in a lawsuit. However, as a copyright holder you can still publish a manuscript derived from your thesis and assign copyright to the publisher, or a different license to it.
• You must own or control copyright over your work to apply a CC license. If you are re-using third party materials in your thesis, prominently indicate which portions of your thesis are not covered by the CC license that you are assigning, or are covered by other licenses or trademark rights. (From Considerations for licensors, Creative Commons )
• If you are submitting a sandwich/integrated thesis that consists of published articles, you may have transferred copyright over your work to the publisher. This would affect your ability to assign a CC license to parts of your thesis or the whole thesis. For more details on publishing before or after graduation, see section Publishing from your thesis: Scenario 3 .

Which CC License should I choose?

Applying a CC license to your thesis is optional, so the choice is yours.

You need to ask yourself first:

• Do you want others to re-use your work and build upon it without having to ask your permission?
• Are you comfortable with others copying and remixing your work?
• Are you comfortable with others profiting from your work?

If you need help answering these questions and choosing a license, you can try the CC License Chooser quiz .

How do I apply the CC license to my thesis?

To apply a CC license to your thesis, indicate it in the following two places:

1. Select one of the 6 CC license types using the ProQuest ETD Administrator site when you submit your thesis.

Click on the “Creative Commons” tab on the side panel to see the full license descriptions and choose appropriately:

The CC license you choose will travel with your thesis when it is transferred to the U of T’s TSpace repository and will be displayed there. Here is an example of a thesis licensed under the CC BY license .

2. Add the CC license of your choice on the thesis title page, under the Copyright statement , e.g.:

© Copyright by Jane Ann Doe 2022 This work is licensed under  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Adding CC license information directly on the title page will ensure that readers are aware of the license even if your thesis is shared or saved locally.

You can use the CC License Chooser  to generate the license statement and link for the thesis title page.

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

Copyrighting your Dissertation

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

Including a Copyright Page in your Dissertation

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

Dissertations Based on Joint Work

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

Using Your Own Previously Published Material in Your Dissertation

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

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

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

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

Using Other Copyrighted Material in Your Dissertation

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

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

Patent and Intellectual Property

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

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do i have copyright over my dissertation .

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

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

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

Should I pay ProQuest to register my copyright?

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

What is a Creative Commons license?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright and Dissertations, Theses, and Master's Reports

• Can I use this in my paper?

How do I license a paper with 3rd party content?

Licensing on proquest, licensing options in digital commons @ michigan tech, creative commons licenses.

• Should I file for copyright?
• Additional Resources

Additional Help

Need more help with licensing options? Contact the Graduate School at [email protected] 

Creative Commons License Chooser (beta)

Don't know what license you need? The Creative Commons License Chooser tool (beta version) is here to help. Follow the steps to select the appropriate license for your work. This site does not store any information.

The original License Chooser is also available here.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges. 

Part of the Creative Commons mission is to provide  Creative Commons licenses  that give every person and organization in the world a free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; ensure proper attribution; and allow others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works

Librarians are available to answer your questions. Click on the Ask Us bubble for FAQs and contact options (chat, email, text, phone).

The information presented in this guide is intended for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice.

The type of access and licensing option you choose (explained below) must be consistent with the permissions you have received from the copyright holders of all 3rd party content in your paper. Be sure to also mark 3rd party content with the appropriate copyright statements.

If you have not received permission to use someone else's content (images, figures, etc.), or if you are not sure you have permission to allow you choose certain access or licensing options, contact the Graduate School at [email protected]

When you deposit a master's thesis or dissertation on ProQuest, you will have the option to make the work available open access or traditional access through that platform. There is a fee associated with open access, but you are not required to make your work available in this manner even if you have selected open access on Digital Commons.

When you deposit your work in Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech , you will choose one of two access options:  

• Campus Access -  restrict access to your work to only those on Michigan Tech's campus
• Open Access -  distribute your work openly to the world

Your copyright is not impacted by your access option. No matter which option you choose, you still hold the copyright to your report, thesis, or dissertation and others must seek your permission to reuse it.

Do you want others to be able to reuse your work?

If the answer to this question is " Yes!" then make sure you choose the Open Access option. This means you may then choose a  Creative Commons license  (listed below). These optional, free licenses allow copyright holders to easily convey to others how their works may be shared or altered. Choosing one of the more restrictive Creative Commons licenses does not prevent you from providing additional permissions to others upon request.

What about my advisor?

After you submit your work to Digital Commons, your advisor will be able to review the work and the licensing options you have selected. Your advisor may request changes.

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• KU Libraries
• Subject & Course Guides
• Copyright Resources
• Copyright for Dissertations and Theses

Copyright Resources: Copyright for Dissertations and Theses

• Getting Started
• Using Copyrighted Works in Scholarship
• Copyright and Teaching
• Copyright Considerations for Authors
• Public Performance Rights for Screening Media

Copyright Considerations for Theses and Dissertations

Copyright affects the author of a thesis or dissertation in two ways:  1) As a user of copyrighted material within the thesis or dissertation and 2) As the copyright owner of the thesis or dissertation. 

In addition to the general resources for all authors on the Getting Started , Using Copyrighted Works in Scholarship and Copyright Considerations for Authors tabs on this guide, this page includes information and resources that address common copyright concerns of authors of theses and dissertations. 

KU Libraries’ Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright is happy to assist KU faculty, staff, and students with questions concerning copyright and fair use of copyrighted materials, in consultation with the KU Office of the General Counsel as needed. Contact us at [email protected] for assistance.

There are guides for graduate scholars from other institutions that you might find helpful, though they will not have a KU perspective:

• Theses and Copyright (MIT)
• Copyright on Campus:  Copyright Concerns of Graduate Researchers (University of Florida)
• Copyright and Fair Use: Copyright Concerns of Students (ATLA)

Using Previously-Published Materials as Chapters

In some disciplines, it's common to include entire articles that were published previously solely by the author or sometimes with co-authors as chapters in the thesis or dissertation.  In the case of co-authored material, each co-author has full copyrights to the entire work, unless there are contractual reasons why this is not the case, such as when an author is an employee of a project that claims copyright in any publications resulting from the research funded by the project.  The issue is that most article publication agreements transfer the author's copyrights to the publisher.  This gives the publisher control over how the work is used and distributed.  This means that authors may not have the rights to include their previously-published work as chapters in their thesis or dissertation without asking permission from the publisher first.

There's a handy list of publishers and their default policies at the bottom of the University of Florida's Copyright Concerns of Graduate Researchers resource. 

KUMC Graduate Students :  Graduate Studies at KUMC has posted instructions about how to cite previously published work and how to submit copyright permissions.   See page 18 of the KUMC Formatting Guidelines for more information.

How do you know if you can include your previously-published work?

Does the article have a creative commons license.

• Authors can include the work as long as they use the work in accordance with the Creative Commons license.

Don't have the publication contract or aren't sure what the contract terms mean?  Try this first: 

• Find the article on the journal web site and click on the Permissions link.
• On the resulting screen, the requestor will usually be asked if they are the author of the article and how they intend to use it. 
• Select "Reuse in a thesis/dissertation"  and complete the rest of the information requested.
• Read the resulting screens carefully to see if the article can be used in the thesis or dissertation. 
• If not, see Asking for Permission , below, for some tips.

Did the publication contract include language that allows the author to use the work after it's published in a new work or specifically in a thesis or dissertation? 

• This is often the case in disciplines where articles are included in theses/dissertations, but not always.  If the contract allows, the author can include the work as long as it is used in accordance with the terms of the publication contract.

Publication agreement doesn't allow the author to use their article in a new publication?  

The author will need to ask the publisher for permission to reuse the article.  See Asking for Permission , below, for some tips.

Asking for Permission

Getting permission takes time; do this as soon as you know you want to use the article.

• Find the Contact information for the journal.  This is often found on the journal website in an About... , Contact or Permissions menu.
• Your name and when you are planning on graduating.
• Indicate that you are the author of the article and that you want to include it in your thesis or dissertation.
• Ask what you need to do to obtain permission.
• Send an email with the subject "Permissions Needed" and include the information above in the email message. 
• If you are very close to graduation, contact the publisher's Permissions department by phone rather than email. 

Author as Copyright Owner

One of the graduation requirements at KU is the completion of the Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) Release Form .  In the Copyright section of that form, you will certify that your work does not, to the best of your knowledge, infringe upon copyrights owned by someone else, through, but not limited to plagiarism, unapproved reproduction of materials or improper citation.

Generally, an author has the copyrights to their thesis or dissertation from the moment that it is fixed in a tangible format, such as a Microsoft Word file, or a printed copy. 

• According to the KU Intellectual Property Policy , the University of Kansas does not claim copyright in theses or dissertations produced by KU students, except for those special circumstances defined in the policy.
• Authors don’t have to include a copyright statement--e.g. Copyright 2019 Jane Smythe-- in the work, though it’s sometimes helpful because it makes it clear who has the copyrights to the work. 
• As the copyright owner of your thesis or dissertation, you need to decide whether you are going to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office.  See the section below:  Registering Your Copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office

Registering Your Copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office

How to register.

As part of the ProQuest submission process, authors can choose to register their copyright with the U.S.Copyright Office. We generally suggest that people register their copyrights if they can afford to do so.  

• The cost is $75 if ProQuest registers the copyright for the student.  Many students choose this because of the convenience.
• The cost is $ 45 if the author registers themselves by going to the U.S. Copyright Office website and registers the copyright using the Standard form.

Why register?

According to the U.S. Copyright Office publication Copyright Circular #1 , pg. 7, there are several reasons why authors should register their copyright:

• Registration establishes a public record of the copyright claim.
• Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U.S. origin.
• If made before or within five years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
• Registration allows the owner of the copyright to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies. For additional information, go to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website at https://www.cbp.gov/.

Embargoes of Theses and Dissertations

One of the decisions that the author of a thesis or dissertation must make as they prepare to graduate is whether to delay the release of the thesis or dissertation for a period of time after graduation.  This decision is often a balance between the need to make the work as visible as possible , and the desire to protect the work because the author wants to publish that research in journal articles or books, because of pending patents, or because the research is sensitive.

If an embargo is needed, KU's Embargo Policy for Theses and Dissertations spells out the circumstances under which an embargo may be requested and the process for doing so.

• First, the student must submit the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) Release Form to the school/College office. Embargo requests need to be approved by the Director of Graduate Studies in the author's department, the Department Chair, or the Committee Chair.  If an embargo is approved, this form will ensure that the thesis or dissertation file is protected from public view.  Keep in mind that the title, abstract, and keywords entered during the ProQuest submission will be visible, even if the file is protected.
• Second, during the online submission process to ProQuest/UMI , in the Publishing Options section, the student must select I want my work to be available in ProQuest as soon as it is published > No, I have patents pending, or another reason why I need to delay access to the full text of my work , then select the embargo term.  If an embargo has been approved, this step will ensure that public view of the work is temporarily restricted in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.

Embargoes may be renewed before the expiration date by filling out the Embargo Renewal form for the KU ScholarWorks copy AND , for the ProQuest copy, by contacting ProQuest at [email protected] or by phone at 1-800-521-0600 at least one month before the embargo expires .

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• URL: https://guides.lib.ku.edu/copyright

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="creative commons license dissertation"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Fair use, copyright, patent, and publishing options.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Embargo of online copies

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

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

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

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

3. Creative Commons license

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

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

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

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

5. Register for copyright?

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

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

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

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

6. Supplementary materials

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

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

7. Make your work discoverable on search engines?

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

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

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

8. Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

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

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

Office of Scholarly Communication

University of California

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Creative Commons Licenses

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• Overview of Creative Commons licenses

Depositing an article for the UC open access policies

Publishing an article open access with a publisher, sharing preprints.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a way for creators to encourage broad dissemination of their work by indicating to readers that the work can be reused and by specifying the conditions for that reuse. In the 20 years since CC licenses were first released, they have been used to license over 2 billion copyrighted works. Popular websites and services using CC licenses include Wikipedia, Flickr, Khan Academy, and OpenStreetMap. Open access scholarly publications also frequently use CC licenses.

CC licenses mix and match a few different elements that specify the terms under which works can be reused. None of the licenses restrict typical reuse of a work that would normally be allowed by law without a license, e.g. redistributing parts of a work that aren’t protected by copyright or engaging in fair use by translating a work for personal study. Below is a list of the elements that may be incorporated into a CC license:

Since all the licenses require attribution, and the ND and SA options are mutually exclusive, combining these elements can only result in six different possible CC licenses. 

• CC BY . Either the original work or a derivative work can be shared, with appropriate attribution, for commercial or noncommercial purposes. This the most open of the six licenses, permitting the broadest sharing and reuse.
• CC BY-NC . Either the original work or a derivative work can be shared with appropriate attribution, but only for noncommercial purposes.
• CC BY-ND . The original work can be shared with appropriate attribution, for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If someone creates a derivative work, like a translation, the license does not permit them to share that derivative work.
• CC BY-NC-ND . The original work can be shared with appropriate attribution, but only for noncommercial purposes. No derivative works can be shared. 
• CC BY-SA . The original work or derivative works can be shared, with appropriate attribution, for commercial or noncommercial purposes. Any derivative works must also use a CC BY-SA license.
• CC BY-NC-SA . The original work or derivative works can be shared with appropriate attribution, but only for noncommercial purposes. Any derivative works must also use a CC BY-NC-SA license.

CC licenses cannot be revoked. Authors can re-share their work with a different license, but anyone who downloaded the work with the previous license can still use it under the terms of that earlier license. If a user wants to use a work in a way that goes beyond what the CC license allows or what the law otherwise allows (e.g. fair use), they must contact the copyright holder for separate permission.

Note: CC0 is a Creative Commons tool that designates Public Domain Dedication, or “no rights reserved.” Rather than a license, CC0 is a complete waiver of the author’s copyright ownership and any related rights, including the right to require attribution. As with the licenses, this dedication to the public domain cannot be revoked. The use of CC0 is often recommended for data sharing because it reduces barriers to data reuse that might be caused by the attribution requirement of a license like CC BY. You can read more about this in our blog post, CC BY and data: Not always a good fit .

When authors participate in the UC OA policies by uploading their articles to eScholarship (UC’s institutional repository and publishing platform), they are asked to choose a CC license. Authors can choose any of the six CC licenses above, or they can choose not to apply a license. If authors opt out of a CC license, the default rules of copyright law control how an article can be used. In the United States, that means the full text of the article usually cannot be shared on another website, nor can translations of the article, but some uses are allowed under exceptions like fair use.

The UC Academic Senate strongly encourages choosing a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license when depositing a scholarly article, to encourage maximum dissemination and use of UC scholarship. Articles shared with a CC BY license can be:

• Shared on course, conference, lab, news, and other websites;
• Reproduced in print coursepacks, even when they are sold by commercial copy shops;
• Translated into other languages, and shared by their translators;
• Excerpted and combined with publications that use a different CC license (without implying the original author’s endorsement of the new work). 

Articles that are published open access on a journal’s website are often published under a Creative Commons license. For journals that are fully open access, the publisher typically chooses a license that applies to all the articles in the journal. In PLOS journals, for example, all articles are published under a CC BY license. In other journals, particularly journals where only some articles are available open access, an author may be able to choose the license. The license choices that are available vary depending on the publisher, but CC BY is usually one of the options.

When an author can choose which license the publisher uses to publish their article, the UC Academic Senate recommends choosing a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license , which encourages maximum sharing and reuse . Articles published with a CC BY license can be:

• Excerpted and combined with publications that use a different CC license (without implying the original author’s endorsement of the new work).

UC authors retain broad rights to reuse the full text of their articles through UC’s open access policies . Authors at other institutions, however, may be granting exclusive rights to control commercial or other use of their articles to their publishers if they choose a license more restrictive like CC BY-NC. To learn more about how this works for authors at institutions that do not have an institutional OA policy, you can read the blog post “ Exclusive licence to publish – now here’s a thing ” at the Coalition S website.

Preprints are journal articles that have not yet gone through peer review. Authors commonly share their preprints on preprint servers designed for this purpose, most of which are discipline-specific. arXiv , bioRxiv , EarthArXiv , and EcoEvoRxiv are all examples of preprint servers, and there are many more . Authors share their preprints for a variety of reasons, including to speed up dissemination of their work and to get early feedback prior to publication. 

Authors sharing their preprints can often choose among a variety of CC licenses, or can choose not to apply a CC license at all. Authors should understand the policies of the journals they are likely to publish with and the policies of their research funders before depositing a preprint. 

Many funders do not explicitly address preprints, but some do. For example, the Gates Foundation and the NIH encourage (but do not require) sharing preprints with a CC BY license.

Publisher policies also vary. Springer Nature encourages authors to share their preprints, and adds that authors may choose “any license of their choice for the preprint including Creative Commons licenses.” The preprint policies of Elsevier , Taylor & Francis , and Wiley allow sharing, and are silent about CC licenses. SAGE , on the other hand, notes that while they do not have a policy against preprint sharing generally, “some journals do not allow submissions from papers that are already available on a preprint server,” and advises authors to check the policies of individual journals. Preprint sharing policies can typically be found on journal websites, and are collected in Sherpa Romeo as well. 

Assuming there are no conflicts with relevant funder or publisher policies, an author may choose to share their preprint under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to encourage maximum dissemination and reuse. Articles shared with a CC BY license can be:

If an author chooses to share their preprint without a CC license, or with a more restrictive license like CC BY-NC-ND, they will have later opportunities to share their work more openly. For example, as described above:

• Authors may publish the final version of the article open access with their publisher under a CC BY license; or
• If the author is a University of California employee, they can participate in UC’s open access policies by sharing the accepted manuscript version of their article with the license of their choice in eScholarship after peer review.

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• Creative Commons licences

What is a licence?

A copyright licence is a contract where a copyright owner, which may be a publisher, artist, writer or photographer, has given permission to a person, or an institution, to use their work in a particular way.  The licence will stipulate how the copyrighted material can be used, such as whether it can be reproduced and shared online, adapted or modified, reprinted in hardcopy, or only used for a specific period of time.

Most copyright licences are restrictive and are for the use of a part of a publication or creative work by one person in a particular circumstance, for instance the reproduction of a diagram in a thesis.

Works published under Creative Commons licences are applied to works by authors/creators to enable reproduction and sharing under certain conditions.

What are Creative Commons licences?

Creative Commons  is an organisation that provides a suite of standardised licences for copyright owners to apply to their creations that permits others to use their work in certain ways. A Creative Commons licence enables a copyright holder to keep their copyright but allows people to copy and distribute the copyrighted work provided they meet the stipulations in the license.

Depending on the chosen Creative Commons licence,  users may be permitted to:

• build upon a work. 

Every Creative Commons licence incorporates three layers

• human readable text
• machine readable encoding

CC licence conditions

Creative Commons licences all contain one basic condition and/or other core conditions combined to provide different or more restrictive permissions to users. It is important to follow the terms and conditions of each licence.

Always provide a link to the licence deed so the person using the work can read the terms of use.

The core conditions are:

Attribution - (BY) : The core condition by which the user of the work is required to attribute the work to the creator by proper referencing (See example below).

Share Alike - (SA) : This condition allows copies and adaptations of the work to be reproduced and shared under the same licence.  

Non-Commercial - (NC) : This condition requires that all uses of the work must be for non-commercial purposes, e.g. educational.

No Derivatives - (ND) : This condition does not allow any remixes or derivative copies of the original material to be shared. 

There are six standard Creative Commons Licences

Important Note: CC licences can only operate where copyright exists and cannot be applied to a work that is already in the  public domain .

Referencing CC licensed work

By citing a work/image/video correctly, you acknowledge and respect the intellectual property rights of the author/creator/researcher. Works provided under a CC licence require attribution and a link back to the source and CC licence when used.

Always provide a link to the licence deed so the person using the work can read the terms of use as in this example.

Authorised burning in the Top End by CSIRO licensed under CC BY 3.0.

References should include hyperlinks to the Source and Licence:

• Title and Source:  Authorised burning in the Top End
• Author: CSIRO
• Licence: CC BY 3.0

More referencing examples

CC image sources

CC0 - no rights reserved

Creative Commons, as an organisation, recommends that institutions, researchers, educators and creators releasing copyright protected works into the public domain use the CC0 public domain dedication.

CCO enables the identification of works that others may freely adapt, modify, enhance and reuse for any purpose without copyright restriction or permission.

This gives creators the ability to waive their copyright ownership and give their work openly and freely to the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an Open Access Policy  using CC0.  See The Harvesters artwork with the OA symbol leading to the CCO deed.

Choosing a licence for your work

Creative Commons has set up an easy-to-use 'Licence Features' page to help creators choose the licence most suitable for their work. Creators can select a licence, enter attribution metadata and provides all the information in HTML for pasting into webpages.

Consider what you would like to achieve by sharing your work before selecting one of the six available CC licences. For example, if you want to contribute to a Wikipedia article your work must carry a CC BY-SA licence. 

This flowchart will help you make a decision.

• 'Which Creative Commons licence is right for me?' flowchart A CC licence application guide

Creative Commons resources

Always include the CC licence when reusing, adapting, distributing or citing material with a CC licence.

• << Previous: Submitting your thesis - A stepped process
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• Writing your thesis
• Managing copyright material in your thesis
• Reproducing your own published articles in your thesis
• Submitting your thesis - A stepped process
• Finding theses
• Faculty Help & Support

Finding Creative Commons content

Search for CC resources

There are many more databases containing CC-licensed images and AV material listed on these pages:

• Audiovisual and music

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

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Copyright for Graduate Students: Theses and Dissertations

• Public Domain
• Creative Commons Licensing
• Obtaining Copyright Permission
• International Materials
• State and Federal Governmental Materials
• University Policies on Copyright
• Depositing Your Dissertation/Thesis in IDEALS

Copyright Questions?

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

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

Scholarly Communication and Publishing

The Fine Print

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

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

Dual Copyright Aspects of Theses & Dissertations

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

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

This guide will discuss both issues.

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

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

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

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

Using Your Own Previously Published Work

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

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

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

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

Fair Use or Seeking Permission: That is the Question

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

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

When using the work of others, consider the following:

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

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

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

• JET Library

ETD Submission Guide

• More about Creative Commons Licenses
• ETD Publishing Overview
• Quick Links & ETD Support
• Process for Thesis
• Process for Dissertation
• For Administrators

When Do I Need a Creative Commons License?

If you plan to file and pay for U.S. formal copyright - which is described on the Process for Dissertation/Process for Thesis tabs of this guide - then you do not need to file for a Creative Commons license. You only need to have one or the other, NOT BOTH. While not as robust, a Creative Commons license is a FREE alternative to protecting your work in an open access environment, and the information below can help you choose which option works best for you.

What is a Creative Commons license?

Visit the Copyright Basics LibGuide  to learn about Copyright.

• Choosing a CC License
• New User Considerations
• About CC Licenses

CC Licenses and Use

Foter. (ND). Copyright Commons Licenses. Retrieved from  https://www.wur.nl/en/article/What-are-Creative-Commons-licenses.htm CC-BY-SA

A Tale of 6 Licenses

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Graduate Thesis Submission Guide

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

Copyright and Your Thesis

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

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

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

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

• Image Use and Copyright for your Thesis (Slides)

Why Does Copyright Matter?

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

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

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

Copyright Checklist

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

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

Resources and Further Reading

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

• ProQuest Copyright Guide The following guide by ProQuest offers guidelines for avoiding copyright infringement and introduces the kinds of materials or sources that require copyright permissions. This document also includes a sample Permission Form and instructions to follow when requesting permission from copyright owners.
• ProQuest - Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis This article by Kenneth Crews offers a more extensive overview of copyright and its significance, before discussing the fundamentals of copyright — both protecting your own and respecting others' — as they relate to your thesis. Though not required reading, Crews' article has a wealth of useful information that will strengthen your understanding of copyright as you research and write your thesis.
• Pratt Institute Academic Integrity Policy Copyright issues directly relate to Pratt's Academic Integrity Policy, as each stress the importance of crediting and acknowledging the contributions other writers, artists, and thinkers have made to your work. "Giving credit where it's due" is a central aspect of academic integrity and an essential element of your thesis.
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• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 10:43 AM
• URL: https://libguides.pratt.edu/thesisguide

Formatting your Thesis and Dissertation:Tools,Tips and Troubleshooting

• I am a new Graduate Student at Florida Tech!
• Thesis and Dissertation Templates
• Learn About Zotero
• Formatting Landscape Pages
• Line Spacing
• Page Numbers
• Page Break and Section Breaks
• Table of Contents or Figures
• Figures Turning Black
• Margin issues with Tables
• Page numbers not appearing
• PDF to PDF/A
• Section Breaks
• Landscape Page Numbers
• Troubleshoot LaTeX formatting issues
• Copyright and Creative Commons Licenses Primer
• Do I need to embargo my thesis or dissertation?
• I'm ready to submit my electronic copy - now what do I do?
• What is the process for obtaining print copies of my thesis or dissertation?

Creative Commons Licensing

Copyright FAQs

Who owns the copyright to my thesis/dissertation?

As noted in the Open Access Policy from the Office of Graduate Programs, any copyrights associated with the thesis remain with the author or other copyright holder . As a condition of being awarded the degree, however, the student grants the university a royalty-free non-exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the thesis, in whole or in part and in any format.

Who owns the intellectual property in my thesis/disseration?

As per Policy No. 2517, Intellectual Property Policy for Students , of the Student Handbook:

Intellectual property developed by students is owned by Florida Tech if the students were employees and paid by internal or external funds at the time of discovery, and the discovery was made within the normal scope of their employment.

In addition, intellectual property developed by students is owned by Florida Tech if the student inventor made substantial use of university facilities to make the discovery. Substantial use of university facilities means extensive non-reimbursed use of either university laboratories and/or computational facilities or human resources. The use of these facilities must be important to the creation of the intellectual property and does not include incidental use of facilities or extensive use of a facility commonly available to all students (such as libraries and offices) or any facility used by students for routine tasks.

The student inventor will be treated by Florida Tech as an inventor as described in faculty policy and the Faculty Handbook.

Will adding my thesis to the Scholarship Repository limit my ability to subsequently publish my research?

A research paper from the July 2013 issue of College & Research Libraries (Ramirez, Dalton, McMillan, et al) cited various studies indicating that instances of publishers rejecting scholarly papers in the areas of science and technology on the basis of pre-existing on-line theses are very rare.  The same paper found that, in the area of the humanities, a clear majority of journal editors and a majority of university press directors did not automatically dismiss papers derived from on-line theses.  If you are concerned your contributing your thesis to Florida Tech's Scholarship Repository will jeopardize future opportunities to publish your work, you may wish to consult with your thesis advisors or librarians regarding the policies of journals in your field of study.

How do I know whether the material I'm using is protected by someone else's copyright?

Did you create the material? If not, you will need to identify the owner of the work's copyright and determine whether the work's copyright protection has expired. You may find the following publication of the U.S. Copyright Office helpful: " How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work ." (PDF)

What if I created the material? Is it possible that I no longer own the copyright to my own work?

Yes. If your work has been published, you may have transferred the copyright to the publisher. Check your publishing agreement: if the publisher owns the copyright to your work, you will need to request permission to reprint it in your thesis and elsewhere.

Is there a way for me to retain my copyright when I submit an article for publication?

You may be able to negotiate which rights you transfer to a publisher before you sign a publishing agreement. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has developed an  author addendum  that students may find useful in negotiating the rights that they transfer.

Where can I learn more about copyright?

A good place to start is the Copyright Research Guide .

Open Licenses

Here are resources that will allow you to explore the various types of open data licenses available and how to apply them to data. 

Project Open Data (U.S. Government):

• Open License Requirements for U.S. Government Works

Creative Commons: 

• Zero License (CC0) CC0 is a "no rights reserved" license that allows owners of copyrighted materials and database-protected content to waive their interests and place their works in the public domain. This allows others to use, build upon, and transform works as they wish.
• Attribution License (CC BY) The CC BY License gives others the same rights as the CC0 license, provided that the original creator is credited for thier work.
• Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA) Similar to the CC BY License, the CC BY-SA requires others to credit the original creator for their work. The CC BY-SA contains an additional measure that requires new works derived from the original work to be licensed under identical terms as the original work.

Open Data Commons: 

• Open Data Commons "Open Data Commons is the home of a set of legal tools and licenses to help you publish, provide and use open data."

Licenses available through the Open Data Commons include:

• Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL)
• Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By)
• Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)
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Using an image under Creative Commons license in PhD thesis

I would like to use this image of a Star Trek tricorder in my PhD thesis as cover art for an "Outlook" style chapter. It is listed as being under CC-BY-SA. I believe this is fine, but I wanted to confirm. As attribution, I have an acknowledgements section at the end of the chapter which says

"Chapter cover art from Bobbie Johnson, used under CC BY-SA"

Is this an acceptable use/attribution of this image? More generally, does using Creative Commons licensed material in my thesis pose problems for the licensing of the thesis itself? If I am reading it correctly I do not need to license the thesis under CC as long as I don't modify the image at all, is this correct?

• creative-commons

3 Answers 3

License version.

Note that the author licensed it under CC BY-SA 2.0 ( that’s what it says on the Flickr page ), while the blog post that made use of this image specifies CC BY-SA 4.0 instead. It’s allowed to license contributions to this image under a newer BY-SA license, but not the original work (only the author may choose to do this). So unless the blog post author got the permission from the image author, their attribution is not correct, and you should assume that the image is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Attribution

Your attribution isn’t sufficient.

For CC BY-SA 2.0, a correct attribution (for using the original image) contains (if available):

• name (or pseudonym) of the author
• title of the work
• URI of the work

and you must specify

• the URI of the license (or include a copy of the license)

So it could look like this:

Chapter cover art: tricorderunbox4 ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/bojo/4078685614 ) from Bobbie Johnson, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ )

or like this if hyperlinks are possible:

Chapter cover art: tricorderunbox4 from Bobbie Johnson, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The ShareAlike (SA) element of the license requires that derivative works have to be licensed under a compatible license, too.

Deciding whether or not a work becomes a derivative work isn’t always easy. And it’s not relevant if the image got modified:

• A work could become a derivative even if the image is used unmodified.
• If a work doesn’t become a derivative, you could still edit the image (it would only affect the license of that image, not your whole document).

In your case, I think that the thesis doesn’t become a derivative work, as the image doesn’t affect the rest of its content in any way. So it should be fine to not license your thesis, or to license it under a different license.

• Thank you for the detailed reply. I will change the attribution accordingly. –  KBriggs Commented May 1, 2018 at 18:34

I am not a lawyer so take what I said with a pinch of salt. But I would venture to say yes, this is acceptable and you have not made any modifications to it and it is not for commercial purposes (if your thesis gets turned into a book for sale that may be a different story).

Next to be extra safe, just contact the author. I looked at the photo and it links to the author's page and he seems active and contactable on flickr. So I would say, just drop him an email and if possible get his clear consent to add it to your thesis.

• Good suggestion, I will do that –  KBriggs Commented May 1, 2018 at 15:22
• Glad I could help in a small way! –  MHL Commented May 1, 2018 at 15:23
• The license does allow commercial use, so using the image for commerical purposes is fine. –  unor Commented May 1, 2018 at 16:08

My advice is to get permission for any image from the originator (don't depend on CCSA or other free licenses, don't depend on Wiki). The reason is these can be a little sketchy ("Flickr washing" and the like). The one thing that I would feel OK is US FEDERAL government (and not national labs!) where you verify the particulars. Or stuff that is obviously free domain (pre 1920s in the US).

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Pumerantz Library Research Guides

Research assistance, subject guides, & useful resources, theses and dissertations: reusing copyrighted material.

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What Do I Need Permission For?

You generally DO need permission to:

• Reuse a survey or assessment instrument created by another person
• Reprint a table, figure, or image from a book or journal article
• Reprint a copyrighted image from the Internet (assume all images are copyrighted unless stated otherwise)
• Make modifications to a copyrighted image or an image released under a Creative Commons No Derivatives license
• Reprint copyrighted images or images released under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license in a book, journal, or other commercial venue

You generally DO NOT need permission to:

• Quote brief excerpts from a scholarly work
• Reprint images released under a Creative Commons license
• Make modifications to images released under Creative Commons licenses that do not contain " No Derivatives "
• Reprint images released under Creative Commons licenses that do not contain " Non-Commercial " in a book, journal, or other commercial venue
• Reuse any work that is in the public domain

Finding Permission-Free Images

Pumerantz Library's Medical Images & Videos research guide has a section dedicated to resources for finding public domain and Creative Commons-licensed images. 

You can also limit Google Images searches to images you can freely reuse or modify for commercial or noncommercial purposes:

Citing Images

A citation for an image or figure should have the following:

• Title of the image
• Author or creator of the image
• Source of the figure or image 
• Copyright or Creative Commons license
• "Reprinted with permission from [Copyright holder]' (if relevant)
• Description of any modifications to the image (if relevant)

Sample citations for Creative Commons images can be found here .

If the original source is a book or journal, include the full citation for the source, not just a URL (even if you originally retrieved the work online). More information about book and article citations can be found on the Pumerantz Library's Citation Style research guide .

If the original source is a website, embed the link to the title rather than typing out the full URL in the citation.

How Do I Request Permission to Reuse Material?

Who owns the copyright?

• Journal articles: The copyright owner is usually the journal (or the journal's publisher), not the author. 
• Books: The author usually retains the copyright, but the publisher generally handles reprint requests. 
• Websites: This can be tricky to determine. Some websites create all their own content, including images, and own the copyright on everything on the site. Other websites, like blogs or aggregator sites, may use images and other content from multiple sources. You can paste the image's URL into a reverse image search to track down the original copyright owner.

How do I contact the copyright owner?

• Journal articles: You can often find a link on the article's website that says something like "Get rights" or "Request permissions." This will take you directly to a page where you can request permission. If not, you can usually find a "Contact us" link on the journal's home page and submit the request that way.
• Books: You can contact the publisher using the mailing address listed on the copyright page of the book or look for a "Contact us" or "Request permissions" link on the publisher's website.
• Websites: If you are fairly sure the website is the original owner of the content you want, use the "Contact us" form or other contact information listed to submit your request. If the website is not the owner, try to find contact information for the original creator--a link to the owner's site is often embedded in their name, if it is listed.

How long does it take to hear back?

It depends! In some cases, you will hear back in a few days. Other times, you may hear back in weeks, months--or never. It is a good idea to give yourself at least a month or two if you can.

Will I be charged a fee to reuse material?

Again, it depends on the copyright owner. Many creators and publishers will allow students to reuse items in their theses or dissertations for free. Others may charge a nominal fee or fees ranging in the hundreds of dollars.

What are my options if permission is denied or too expensive--or if I just never hear back?

It is a good idea to have a backup plan, like another permission-free image or a brief written description of the desired figure (in your own words) to use instead. If only the original material will work, you can consider appealing (once, and politely) to the copyright owner. If this does not work, you may need to cut the material altogether.

Can I just redraw the figure myself? Then I'll have the rights to the image, right?

No. This is legally murky at best (if you redraw the image in a completely different way) and shady/illegal at worst. Use one of the solutions listed above instead.

Copyright and permissions can be difficult to navigate. If you need help, please email  Kelli Hines  or use the icons above to contact one of the reference librarians.

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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
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Securing Your Copyright

As the author of your thesis or dissertation, only you are legally entitled to authorize publication or reproduction of your intellectual property, although you may assign your rights to others.  Copyright is secured automatically when a work is created,  which is when it is fixed in a tangible form for the first time. Under present U.S. copyright law, the term of the copyright is the author's life plus 70 years.

Registering Your Copyright

Registering your copyright is optional, as your work is automatically copyrighted when it is published. If you wish to further protect your rights in a copyright dispute and to be eligible for damages caused by infringement, you may choose to register your copyright. You are eligible to register your copyright at any time within the term (author's life plus 70 years). ProQuest provides an optional copyright registration service for a fee ($75 in 2022). If you pay for this service, ProQuest will register your copyright and submit your manuscript to the Library of Congress. 

Creative Commons

U.S. Copyright is a collection of rights about how a work fixed in a tangible medium or expression can be used.  By applying a Creative Commons badge you let readers know which features of the document can be used/reused/recited with attribution and if there are limits . Application of the Creative Commons badge through Proquest is optional.

• The CC-BY license allows for use/reuse with attribution.
• Addition of NC states you are requesting no commercial reselling of the work without permission of the author (you).
• The ND badge is no derivative work, which might be a graphic version or language translation, without formal permission. For example, if a print version is the original version, then an electronic version would need permission from the author to create and distribute. Journal articles may use CC-BY-NC-ND to allow the original PDF to be viewed but not commercially resold or derived works created.
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Creative Commons

Tag: dissertation, new stanford electronic dissertation program enables cc licensing.

Last November, Stanford started accepting digital dissertations for the first time, allowing students to opt out of hundreds of dollars in printing and processing costs. The new program also enabled CC licensing, allowing students to make their work available under a license of their choosing. Of the 60 doctoral students who submitted their dissertations electronically,…

CC Licensing Your Dissertations

PhD students slave for years on researching, writing, and drafting a final product, usually text, that marks the culmination of their candidacy for the highly esteemed doctoral degree. This product is then reviewed by a tenured member of the faculty in their domain of expertise, or a small committee of said members. Upon passing this…

The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing

Herkko Hietanen, project lead for CC Finland, has made his 320 page dissertation available online under the CC BY-NC-ND license, titled The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing — How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved: The dissertation contributes to the existing literature in several ways. There is a wide…

danah boyd | apophenia

Making connections where none previously existed, licensing your dissertation under creative commons.

When I wrote my dissertation, it didn’t dawn on me that using the Creative Commons license might be remotely controversial. There’s a template for dissertations at Berkeley and one of those pages is the copyright page. Initially, I edited the copyright page to match the CC license that Cory Doctorow uses in all of his books on the copyright page. Shortly before I was set to file, I talked to another grad student in my department who had just filed his dissertation. Much to my horror, I learned that he was the first student to file his dissertation at Berkeley under the Creative Commons license and that it had been a disaster. He went through many iterations before they accepted it, complete with the CC license as an Appendix. Not wanting to pick a fight, I copied his approach verbatim. I went to file my dissertation and hit a stumbling block. They told me they had never seen such a thing. I told them that Joe Hall had filed that way only a few months back. They told me that it would need approval from high up and that I’d have to wait a long time to get that approval. Frantic, I started texting and emailing Joe. Luckily, he had all of the emails on hand and forwarded them to me. As it turns out, the person that I was trying to file with as the one who filed Joe’s and when I showed her emails that she sent negotiating this process with Joe, she let me file. I suggested she might want to take note since there would be plenty more students like me and Joe.

Today, the Daily Cal ran a story about our adventures in filing. I was pleased to learn that the Dean of the Grad Division committed to making CC licenses available to students in the future. This is truly good news!

But I also want to make a plea to all of you grad students out there who are slaving away on your dissertations… Use Creative Commons. The forms you fill out when you file your diss under ProQuest encourage you to make sure to copyright your dissertation. While theft is part of the framing, it is also framed as being about you profiting off of doing so (and ProQuest brokering the sale of your diss). Realistically, 99% of all grad students are never going to see a dime directly from their dissertation. What’s the advantage of keeping “all rights reserved”? Why not let folks use it for whatever non-commercial purposes they deem fit (like teaching a chapter or two in class)? I mean… I would LOVE it if someone translated my dissertation. Or remixed it. Or turned it into a movie. That ain’t ever gonna happen, but still… why actively prevent it?

And while we’re at it… why not make it freely available? Part way through my dissertation, I realized that I had never read a dissertation. I was surprised to find that very few people make their dissertations easily available. Why? In some senses, the diss is quite embarrassing. It’s imperfect. You’re sick of it. But there are huge advantages to making it available. At the very least, it allows future students to get a sense of what they should expect. (There was nothing more nerve-calming than realizing that my mentors’ dissertations were totally sloppy at points.)

Anyhow, if you’re a student out there, consider licensing your dissertation under Creative Commons and making your diss freely available either on your website or through services like SSRN or arXiv. I’m sure that there are many others out there doing similar things, but perhaps our story and template can help you persuade your school to allow CC-licensed dissertations.

My dissertation: Taken Out of Context

Joe’s dissertation: Policy Mechanisms for Increasing Transparency in Electronic Voting

32 thoughts on “ licensing your dissertation under Creative Commons ”

I’m curious as to why you decided to include the Non-Commercial clause. I’ve always thought of it as rather vague, since the degree to which I might profit by distributing your work is not discrete, but rather a continuum. For example, if I offer it for download on my site, and I have ads on the site, am I profiting from your work?

I offer over 2500 photographs under a free license on my gallery site , and I made the decision to allow “commercial usage”, whatever that is. I just don’t see the material being used in an inappropriate manner, given that attribution and license must remain intact.

Alas, there’s no way to distinguish between you putting it up on your site and making money off of links (which wouldn’t bug me one iota) and a publisher publishing it in paper form without me knowing about it. Since I’m working on turning it into a book, that’s the one thing that I didn’t want to be done without express permission. But there was no clean way to just list that and abide by the structure required by my university to get CC through (e.g., not modifying the license or clarifying in my copyright page).

I released my dissertation under a CC (NC/ATT/SA) license in late 2006. The biggest issues I ran into was from our Library. I did it because I studied the open source movement, I believe in copyleft, and it was a natural for my work. The CC release was one of the best things I have ever done, and as you have done here, it is very important to promote these licenses for our academic work. The act of copyleft gets to the incredibly important question, as academics, why do we publish?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3363/Dissertation-Couros-FINAL-06-WebVersion

@zephoria: Ah, I was not aware you had commercial plans for it. That’s certainly a valid reason for the NC clause!

“I was surprised to find that very few people make their dissertations easily available.” Actually, in the natural sciences almost everybody makes their thesis available. I think you would be hard pressed to find a mathematician without a web site with all of his publications. Here is a link with recent PhD theses in just one sub-area of physics: http://arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/abs:+thesis/0/1/0/past/0/1

I don’t think people use CC much though.

Isn’t anyone interested in making a academic-compatible CC licence? With aspects like: you are not allowed to make money off it, but if you do, just tell every grad student about it, because *that* would be a miracle; you are not allowed to say any part of it is sloppy unless you first say that it is amazing work, are standing in an neon-lit room filed with sleepy grad students; you are not allowed to talk about it using jargon, unless it is jargon introduced by the author.

About translating it, or adapting it in film (back to almost serious stuff): Google Translate is going an increasingly good job for academic work (I use it to show my colleagues’ papers around); I can’t imagine a single human reader going through your entire thesis, but you might want to set up a wiki with GT as a first draft. Adapting it into a short film is the direction PhD are encouraged to go now in France: http://docupfestival.free.fr/ and there’s already countless clips about Facebook & MySpace, so I do think adapting your work is very likely and would be enjoyable.

@Bertil Hatt: Google Translate is definitely NOT a good starting point for translation, be it collaborative or not.

danah, I’ve been actually toying with the idea of translating portions of your work (not just the diss) into Czech, those that would be most interesting and relevant to the Czech linguistic community. If I ever manage to get round to it I will make the extracts freely available on johanka.net or on my pro site. Come to think of it, creating a mini-movie, consisting of presentation slides with pictures might be a good idea, too. 🙂

Creative Commons makes perfect sense for academic works of any nature. Every day it feels I read about a new journal that’s adopted some kind of open access policy. It’s a very exciting time.

Well, I wouldn’t call my experience a disaster. Although, when you’re one week from filing and all sorts of stuff *has* to fall into place, this kind of thing can be more than a simple bump in the road. (Interested readers can find my version of the story on my blog, linked here from my name.)

Also, Dean Szeri hasn’t committed to anything. I’m not trying to be critical of him, but I wanted to be precise. He’s said his staff is examining these kinds of options. So, until there’s a more formal move made to legitimize CC for dissertations, we’ll help who we can.

My dissertation (including CC statement on the copyright page & license-as-appendix) passed the format review at my grad school last week without critical comment, but I haven’t submitted it for final approval. I’ll let you know what happens!

My thesis is also under CC license. Didn’t have any problem to do that at my university. The only thing I’m struggling is with the idea to make it digitally available before I manage to publish one chapter in a journal. Our library is trying to put all dissertions digitally available which is cool but I’m not totally sure if there is in fact a problem if you want to publish your thesis in a journal once it is already widely available.

Here at University of Toronto, the new standard dissertation template just issued last year by our School of Graduate Studies provides the option of Creative Commons licensing (but then again, we have an active Open Knowledge initiative in our Graduate School).

As to your comment about never having read a dissertation, I’m quite surprised, actually. When I took the masters thesis seminar course (thesis seminar courses for both masters and doctoral students are mandatory in my faculty), one of the requirements was to go to the stacks, find a thesis you loved and one you hated. The exercise was to reflect on what aspects of the thesis – irrespective of topic – engaged and repelled you, respectively. The one I loved was so compelling that I sat down in the middle of the stacks and read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. That exercise was so remarkably informative to my own style of thesis-writing that I intend to use it with (hopefully) future thesis students of my own.

Back on topic – I think there remains the socialized fear among “fogey” academics about one’s ideas being stolen, and the faint hope of making a fortune from the book (and movie rights, I suppose); hence the reluctance to publish a dissertation under anything other than “all rights reserved,” a.k.a. “all obscurity guaranteed.” Fear and greed – the short story of western civilization, such as it is.

I think the old guard in academia prefers to generally separate “your” stuff from “theirs” as much as possible. This is a world where many live, (which may or may not be in a land far, far away) where professors are reluctant to even provide a PDF version of lecture notes. I have many friends in TT positions in the humanities who refer to “working on their manuscript” and converting their dissertation to a book form. Books and publishing deals take more time to develop in other fields, but if they come through, it’s serious academic capital to cash in for tenure. It’s a bigger race in other disciplines to remain contemporary and relevant. Still, I think it’s difficult to think up an argument against unrestricted non-commercial uses of a dissertation! Kudos for being a trailblazer.

I could rewrite your dissertation as an action-adventure coming of age tale movie; I know exactly how I would do it. If someone gives me a dare, I may in fact do so during downtime this summer (or trial-run short-form screenplay).

I’ve considered doing this, I am generally pro-CC. But, per Sam Jackson’s joke above, is anyone really going to use my dissertation for any reason? As my adviser says, the only person who cares about your dissertation is you. So I’m not sure if it is worth the trouble or not. But it certainly is a good ideal.

Re: the issue of whether anybody cares about your dissertation or can make money off it — like so much else in academic life, this depends on your discipline. As someone who worked for more than 15 years as a humanities editor at a university press, I’d point out the following:

Most scholars in the humanities and many in the social sciences need to publish a book to get tenure; for nearly all of them, the first book is a revision of their diss. Many of them will earn royalties for it. Some may even be lucky enough to have publishers competing for their work. Even where there are no royalties, it’s fair to say that for many scholars, a good dissertation is a significant piece of their potential hire-ability, tenure, job security, etc. So I would caution against the notion that there are no financial consequences to these decisions.

There is much to be said about the pros and cons of working with a publisher (and good ones will help scholars revise their work into something far more polished than the diss) versus making your work freely available online, as well as submitting it to ProQuest and letting them sell it back to libraries as part of a dissertations database (plus many other options). This isn’t easy to sort out. As this comment thread indicates, there is certainly no one-size-fits-all argument. It’s not only fogey versus hip, or open versus closed. In academia, your intellectual property is the most important thing you possess.

@Nata, I’d suggest you ask mentors or others in your field if they’ve had experience with the first freely available/then published model.

you’d never read a dissertation? i’m not sure that’s an information dissemination problem, necessarily–the berkeley library keeps them (admittedly you have to page them), there’s a fairly new program that digitizes UC dissertations and makes them available free to UC users, you can get them through ILL . . . i’m not saying it would have been convenient to do, but the possibility was there.

M – in most cases, it’s just as difficult to do regular copyright as it is CC, but by doing it CC-style, you help lay the foundation for future researchers. That’s what’s critical.

When I submitted my Master’s Thesis, I recall having to *pay* ProQuest in order to make it freely available. There was a $75 or $90 fee or somesuch so that if anyone found it searching in the ProQuest database, they would be able to download it. I thought that was pretty lame but I paid it anyway.

NC is probably good, but no derivate works from the original work is really a bad idea for dissemination of knowledge and further usage of it. Thats when we believe in the basic fallacy that creative commons is ‘opposed’ to copyrights or its not a ‘restrictive license’ itself.

Ouch – glad you got that sorted out! Berkeley is unforgiving when it comes to dissertations. When I filed mine, they rejected it because my *dedication page* was not formatted according to their liking – seems I included too many names. I had to tell them those were all family members who died while I was writing up. They felt bad, but that didn’t stop them from telling me to reprint the list with different spacing.

Anyway, another issue here: what about students reprinting figures and entire chapters that were previously published in journals? That is commonly done with PhD theses in at least some fields. For my dissertation, I had to get permission to include a paper on which I was a co-author. Because of that, I would be unable to copyright my thesis under a creative commons license unless I did it chapter by chapter. This is sort of the issue Nata mentions, but in reverse.

The ProQuest publishing racket is (I think) confined to the US. When I first saw the forms — for my wife’s diss — I was gobsmacked. It also reminded me that Oxford’s fairly loose thesis formatting regulations (at least for my faculty) made life so much less of a hassle.

Monica’s right, though, that if you’re looking for an academic career along conventional lines, the thesis/diss-to-monograph transition is one that could be severely hampered by going CC. That $60 monograph might sell about 100 copies, but until the publication requirements of academia change, having it in print matters.

It looks like you’re not allowing derivative works in your license. Doesn’t that mean that no one can create a translation of the work?

Also, to enforce your Creative Commons license, it is still helpful to register the copyright. Did you bother?

Matt – due to the hiccups involved in Berkeley, I went with the no-derivatives license in order to be able to file on time. It was not my preference though. I decided that if anyone wanted to do a derivative, they’d ask, and I’d happily accept. I will even post any translation anyone does on my site.

I’ve intentionally not registered the copyright. No US-based company is going to publish it for-profit against my will and I have no intention of going after any non-profit based usage. I also think that registering copyright is counter-productive when you’re talking about CC so it was a conscious choice.

Interesting discussion — but my 2 main questions are not answered

(1) on what grounds would a University not allow you as the author and hence (correct my if I’m wrong) owner of the copyrights to choose how to deal with your rights? CC is a licensing scheme, that means it does not override copyright. I can only think of one answer which would be that the University wants to claim all the rights on the thesis — that would be outrageous and I would call it piracy.

(2) why would publishing your original text under a CC license impede your possibility of publishing as a book? One publisher in the UK has just made the move to publish academic books and set them online under a CC license! That’s the way publishing will be going, since what you need as an academic is not the royalties (forget the stories of making money from a book!), what you need is exposure and attention and being read, cited, translated. That’s so much easier with CC.

And always remember: CC adds certain permissions (and obligations) for re-use while keeping the main requirement of copyright: to recognize you as the author. But you can allow any kind of re-use — under the condition of “non-commercial” and/or “share-alike” if you wish. And you can prohibit derivative works with the “non-deriv” clause. But that stops translations, too. Still, the normal copyright exceptions (or “fair use”) are valid, so you are allowed to cite even from an ND-licensed text.

Thanks for posting this. I’ve got 2 questions:

– What did Berkeley and UMI/Proquest tell you about which publishing options to choose (i.e. Open Access or Traditional Access) when applying a Creative Commons copyright page? I’ve had some discussions with my graduate school’s relevant administrators, and they didn’t seem to know whether UMI/Proquest would accept a dissertation for traditional-access publication with a CC license.

– Have you read anything about the various career implications across different academic fields of CC-licensing one’s dissertation? I’m mindful of the earlier commentor’s point about humanities dissertations often being the core of one’s first book.

Shane –

I’m not able to answer your first question, but you should ask Joe Hall.

A CC license shouldn’t affect one’s book publishing contract. The author does not need to make the book itself CC just because the dissertation was CC. The author doesn’t need to make a CC dissertation publicly available. And an author probably shouldn’t allow commercial reproductions of their dissertation without permission so they’re the only one who can turn it into a book.

That said, I am currently using my dissertation as the core of my first book. I’m working with Yale Press who has been wholly supportive. They will even CC my book (and make it available for public download).

Just stumbled on your article and had a look at your dissertation… Made me think that if you’d like to make it even more accessible, you should also consider the technical point of view. Your PDF isn’t text-copy friendly, it’s image-like. It would be a bummer if I’d like to quote big parts of it, or remix its contents. Accessibility can be eased by the legal stuff, but the technical part is also important. Fine, I could find a way to OCR it, but maybe you could consider that when encoding your book’s PDF…

A friendly advice 😉

I’m considering the CC license for my dissertation (at another UC). I’m not sure that there has been one submitted under this license at my particular campus. Where would you suggest going as a starting point to explore this option? What about the possibility of some of this work reemerging in subsequent journal publications?

So, is it possible to submit a dissertation to Proquest under any Creative Commons License? Or is it limited to certain CC licenses (e.g., CC-BY-NC-SA)?

Has anyone been successful in using CC licensing at other UCs? (Notably UCLA) I tried to CC-license my Master’s thesis a while ago and it turned out to be a bigger headache than I thought. Hopefully it’ll work better for the dissertation…

Comments are closed.

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Does anyone know if you have to provide credit if you use images from servier medical art.

Hi, I am making a scientific diagram for a thesis and I am using an image from the site Servier Medical Art . Normally, I make my diagrams myself but for one diagram it is easier for me to use an image that is already made.

In the 'Terms of use' section of the website it states: The Content is intended for the User’s personal information only and within the strict limits of use of the Site in accordance with the present Terms.

I am using the image for my personal use, and I am not intending to have my work published anywhere. As it's my first time using an image from this site, I was wondering if anyone knows if you have to provide credit for the source of the image if you are using it solely for your personal use? Any insights are appreciated.

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Home > SOCIALWORK > Social Work Dissertations > 87

Social Work Dissertations

A quasi-experimental design: multisystemic therapy as an alternative community-based treatment for youth with severe emotional disturbance.

Kirstin Painter

Graduation Semester and Year

Document type.

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work

Social Work

First Advisor

Joan Rycraft

This study compared multisystemic therapy to usual services in a community mental health setting for emotionally disturbed youth with externalizing disorders. Usual services included the combination of case management with a family skills training curriculum. A secondary data analysis utilizing a pretest-post-test, quasi-experimental design was used. Eighty-seven youth were in each group and were matched based on gender (53% female, 47% male) and ethnicity (34 % African American, 54% Caucasian, 10% Hispanic, and 2% other). Findings of this study suggest that youth who received MST experienced more improved treatment outcomes across the combination of areas in their social ecology than the youth who received usual services. The combined outcomes for school functioning, family functioning, youth functioning, youth mental health symptoms, substance abuse, juvenile justice involvement, risk of self harm, and severe disruptive or aggressive behavior were found to be significantly better for the MST group compared to the usual services group. In looking at individual areas separately, the MST group experienced significantly less juvenile justice involvement and a clinically significant level of improvement in mental health symptoms. However, the results of this study were mixed in that both groups experienced comparably significant improvement in youth functioning, problems in school, problems with family functioning, risk of self harm, and severe aggressive behavior. The findings of this study support the social ecological model of MST and its use for treating seriously emotionally disturbed youth with externalizing disorders in preventing juvenile justice involvement and improving treatment outcomes across the youth's social ecology. The use of MST in community mental health with this population of youth could prevent families from relinquishing custody of their children in order to receive effective treatment for them, and avert juvenile justice involvement.

• Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social Work

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

Recommended Citation

Painter, Kirstin, "A Quasi-experimental Design: Multisystemic Therapy As An Alternative Community-based Treatment For Youth With Severe Emotional Disturbance" (2007). Social Work Dissertations . 87. https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/socialwork_dissertations/87

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