As a graduate student, copyrighting impacts you in two ways. First, as the writer, you have legal rights concerning the contents of your thesis/dissertation. Second, as a researcher, you must make every effort not to violate the copyrights of others. Please visit the ASU library guide to copyright for authors for more information.
Copyrighting Your Own Work
You own the copyright to your thesis or dissertation. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required, but it provides legal protection in any case of copyright infringement against your work and ensures that your document will be preserved in the Library of Congress. If using your own previously published work, first confirm if the copyright was transferred to the publisher, and include any necessary permissions as an appendix in your document. Circular 1 Copyright Basics (copyright.gov/circs) provides useful information about the copyright process.
If you have questions, you may contact the Copyright Office Public Information Office on the Internet at copyright.gov or by phone at (202) 707-3000. The form used to register a copyright for most documents is Form TX. Certain documents in the performing arts, such as musical scores or plays, may require Form PA. Contact the Copyright Office if you are not sure which form to use. Application forms are available online at copyright.gov/forms.
You can apply for a copyright through UMI/ProQuest when you submit your document through ETD. If you plan on copyrighting your document, follow these additional formatting instructions:
Place the copyright symbol (©) on the lower half of a second page after the title page with the year and your name centered between the margins. The copyright symbol meets the requirements of the Universal Copyright Convention to which the United States and most European and Asian nations belong. You should also include the statement “All Rights Reserved” below the copyright line. This statement will afford additional protection under the Buenos Aires Convention, to which the United States and most Latin American nations belong.
©2011 Your Full Name
All Rights Reserved
The copyright page will become your second page, between the title page and the abstract. Please note that the copyright page does not change pagination; your abstract will still be page ‘i’.
If you include a copyright page, then you must pay the copyright fee.
Using the Copyrighted Work of Others
Copyrighted material includes tables, charts, graphs, maps, questionnaires, illustrations, photographs, literary works, etc. It is against the law to reproduce copyrighted materials, in full or in part, without permission of the copyright owner. If you need to include copyrighted source material in your document, you must obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to its use. The written permission you secure from the author or publisher to use copyrighted work in your document should be included in an appendix.
Fair Use rights have the same legal standing in the law as the copyright owner's rights. Fair Use allows for the limited use of copyrighted content (such as tables, maps, or works of art) to create new works that benefit society. Before you complete your document, consult copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
ProQuest Copyright Guidelines
Refer to "Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis: Ownership, Fair Use, and Your Rights and Responsibilities" from ProQuest by Kenneth D. Crews at https://pq-static-content.proquest.com/collateral/media2/documents/copyright_dissthesis_ownership.pdf
The article is included below, reproduced under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, with selected content removed for brevity and relevance to publishing options available through Arizona State University.
Part I: Getting Started
Why copyright?
In the academic context, copyright is primarily about getting the most from your scholarly work, and it is less about legal complications with threats of possible liabilities. Taking the time to learn a little about copyright can give you the insight to know your options under the law, to make your dissertation more successful, and to help you avoid possible copyright conflicts and dilemmas in the future. The subject of this manual is your dissertation, but many of the issues here will arise in all of your future scholarship. With each article, book, computer program, website, and other new work that you prepare throughout your career, you will find that giving some attention to copyright will make your publications more successful. Your dissertation is just the start.
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.
Making a Plan of Action
The copyright guidance in this manual is structured to help you quickly understand and focus on the issues that are important to your dissertation and future scholarship. Here is a suggested process for addressing copyright:
- First, read the overview of copyright fundamentals in Part II.
- Second, review the questions in Part III and identify the ones that are relevant to your work.
- Third, make a plan of action related to your copyright questions.
- If your dissertation will have photographs, extensive quotations, and other materials from third-party sources, evaluate the copyright status of each and whether your use may be fair use or need permission.
- If you are in the middle of your graduate study and plan to publish some of your research, choose a publisher that will accommodate your dissertation plans, and study closely the terms of the publication agreement.
- If you are completing your dissertation, evaluate and select the options about Creative Commons or open access that might be right for you.
Part II: Fundamentals of Copyright for Dissertations
What do you really need to know about copyright? Start with the following core principles of copyright as applied to dissertations. Many of the most important points will be examined in greater detail with supporting references in Part IV of this manual.
Your dissertation is protectable. Copyright law protects “original” works that are “fixed” in some medium—for example, written on paper, stored on a computer drive, sculpted in clay, or recorded on tape or other media. You wrote your dissertation, using your original words or other expression.
You probably have “fixed” it in various ways.
Your dissertation in fact is protected. It would be a rare and unusual dissertation that is not protected. A work that is “original” and “fixed” is protected automatically under copyright law. You do not need to register it with the U.S. Copyright Office or even put a copyright notice on the dissertation.
It is copyrighted upon creation. Those procedures and formalities may be a good idea—as will be explained later—but they are not required for copyright protection.
You are most likely the copyright owner. Copyright ownership vests initially with the person who created the new work. If you wrote the dissertation, you own the copyright. However, it is possible that you may have entered into a funding or employment arrangement that would place copyright ownership with someone else. Review your agreements carefully.
You can decide how to publish your work. Students should consult with their advisors and other officials about local university policies related to depositing dissertations with university repositories and possible “embargoes” or postponements on public release of your dissertation. To be clear, when you deposit your work with ProQuest, the company does not ask for a transfer of the copyright. Your rights in your work do not change. As long as you hold the copyright, you are in general able to decide how your dissertation may be made available, reworked into a book, or divided into a few journal articles. As the copyright owner, you get to make those decisions. But if you give away your copyright—as some publication agreements require—you can lose all of those opportunities and privileges.
You can decide to enforce your rights or share them. As the copyright owner, you have the legal right to enforce claims against infringers. At the same time, you also have the privilege of allowing uses. You can grant permission on request, or you can attach a Creative Commons license to your work that permits broad public use.
The works you included from other sources are also likely copyrighted. Just as the law protects your dissertation, it also protects most of the original text, music, photographs, computer code, and other materials that you borrowed from other sources to include in your dissertation. Respecting those copyrights is part of the process.
You have options for properly including materials from other sources. Copyright law offers three basic possibilities. First, the work may be in the public domain. Copyrights eventually expire, placing the works in the public domain. Some works, such as works of the U.S. government, are not protectable at all. Second, your use of copyrighted works may be within fair use. Third, you may secure permission from the copyright owner. That permission may come from an individual request, or the source itself may have a Creative Commons license or other statement permitting your use.
Keep your copyrights and keep copies of your agreements. Whenever you enter into a publication agreement or other agreement related to your dissertation or any future work, read it, negotiate the terms, and keep a copy of everything you sign. Similarly, keep copies of all permission letters—ones you send to secure permission, and ones you receive from the next researcher wanting to use your copyrighted works.
As you can see, copyright grants rights and imposes responsibilities. One virtue of copyright law is that it offers options. You can manage your own copyright in ways that are protective or generous. You can be cautious or assertive about fair use. For the most part, you decide how you want to face up to the copyright tasks at hand. Either way, you need to learn a little about the law and make well- informed choices.
Part III: Copyright Decisions and Your Dissertation
The recurring point of this overview is the importance of making well-informed decisions as you work through the copyright issues related to your dissertation. Outlined below are two sets of questions that you can help you address the range of copyright issues that might be relevant to your dissertation. Not everyone will need to address all questions, but by working through these groups of copyright issues, you will probably have attended to all issues that are realistically relevant to your research.
1.1 Do you Own the Copyright in your Dissertation?
Barring such extraordinary conditions, you wrote your dissertation and you are the copyright owner. It is generally good practice to include a proper copyright notice on your dissertation (for example, “Copyright 2014, Belinda Fullname”).
1.2 Should you Register the Copyright?
You should seriously consider registering your copyright claim with the U.S. Copyright Office. The fees are modest and the possible legal benefits are enormous. ProQuest offers a registration service when you file your dissertation, making the process easy and affordable. In addition to the legal benefits, ProQuest has negotiated an arrangement with the Library of Congress to be sure that every registered dissertation is entered into the searchable catalog and contributed to the Library’s collections, assuring that future researchers can find a record of your work. Every dissertation author should consider seriously the merits of registration. More information on registration is available through ProQuest here [http://www.proquest.com/enUS/products/dissertations/submitted_authors.shtml] and via the United States Copyright Office website at http://www.copyright.gov/.
1.3 Should you use a Creative Commons License?
Creative Commons is a means for you, as the copyright owner, to share your work with others. A most versatile CC licenses permits any uses of your work with attribution; you might instead want to limit the license. An overview of the various CC license options is available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses. You might skip the CC system and simply write your own statement on your dissertation spelling out the uses you want to permit. As the copyright owner, you generally have the right to decide whether to attach such a permission or license to your dissertation. For uses beyond the license term you have established or those uses permitted under law (such as fair use), researchers may come to you for permission.
Decision Group Two: Using Other Copyrights
2.1 Have you Identified all Third-Party Materials?
Comfortably before filing your dissertation—preferably several months before—do a systematic review of your draft. Identify all materials that you might include in the final product, ranging from ordinary quotations to full reproductions of photographs, music, software, and any other copyrightable material. Each item will need at least brief consideration for copyright clearance, but others may require careful evaluation and perhaps even the time to track down a copyright owner for permission. The next questions summarize the likely possibilities. You should also identify thirdparty materials in order to give them an appropriate citation. Citing sources is of great importance for intellectual honesty, but citations do not resolve the copyright questions.
2.2 Are any Materials in the Public Domain?
Works in the public domain have no copyright restrictions on use. Copyright does not apply to facts, slogans, processes, and procedures. Copyright does not apply to works produced by officers and employees of the U.S. government, such as congressional reports and State Department studies. Copyrights also expire, placing many older works in the public domain.
2.3 Are your activities within Fair Use?
Just as a CC license on your dissertation can help future researchers, a CC license on other materials can help support your work. For example, works that have the generous CC “attribution only” license may be included in your dissertation, provided you give proper credit to the author or rightsholder. Add a footnote as you would for any other source, and look for suggestions from the author about preferred form of attribution. Some CC licenses allow only noncommercial uses, and those materials will most likely be acceptable for inclusion in your dissertation. You may have to revisit the use those materials if you later revise your dissertation for commercial publication as a book, monograph, or journal article.
2.5 Do you have Permission?
If you have permission from the copyright owner to use the materials, you are in great shape. That permission may be in the form of a formal letter, printed and signed. It can also be an email, or a suitable Creative Commons license, or a license that you or your university may have for the use of materials in a database or other collection. Check with your librarians for the terms of use of materials from you library’s collections.
2.6 Are you Including any Materials created by you, but Previously Published?
Many dissertations include text, diagrams, images, and other materials that may well have been written and created by you, but they were published before filing the dissertation. Be careful. You may be the author, but take the time to locate and review your publication agreement. Did you transfer the copyright to the publisher? Did you retain the right to reuse the content in future projects? Unfortunately, if you gave away too much, you might have to return to the publisher and seek 8 permission to use even your own work. One important lesson: Read and negotiate your publication agreements with care.
Part IV: A Closer Look at Copyright
The fundamentals of copyright are reasonably straightforward, but details can get complex. Writings on the law of copyright fill volumes. For a few of the issues relevant to dissertations, a closer look at some details is warranted.
The Public Domain
Works without copyright protection are in the “public domain,” and can be used without concern about restrictions or legal claims based on copyright law.11 The public domain comprises several categories of works:
Ideas and Discoveries. The law specifically states that ideas, processes, concepts, and discoveries are not eligible for copyright. Belinda may be using crucial concepts and formulas that can earn Nobel prizes in chemistry, but copyright law does not protect them. If copyright granted legal control over ideas, the expansion of knowledge would be severely constrained. Belinda is free to build on the ideas of others, although the words and the computer code manifesting those ideas may well have copyright protection.
Works created by the U.S. Government. A specific statute prohibits copyright protection for federal government works, but even this rule is not so simple.13 Reports written by members of Congress and employees of federal agencies, as part of their public function, are not copyrighted. But projects written by non-government officials with federal funding are protectable. Belinda’s graduate research may be funded by the NSF or other federal agency; the grant alone does not put her work in the public domain. Further, the exclusion applies only to works of the United States federal government. State, local, and foreign governments are left to decide whether their own works will have copyright protection. If it is not clear whether a specific governmental work may have copyright protection, inquire with the appropriate agency that created or published it.
Some Foreign Works. Consistent with the terms of the Berne Convention and other multinational treaties, U.S. copyright law protects most foreign works on generally the same terms as domestic works.14 Only a few countries have not entered into copyright treaties or agreements with the U.S., leaving their works unprotected in this country. A publication from the U.S. Copyright Office notes the few countries with no copyright ties to the U.S., or whose relations are “unclear.”15
Works that are not “Fixed.” Works that are not “fixed” in a tangible medium are not protected under federal copyright law. A speech or music performance that is not recorded, written, or otherwise
“fixed” in some medium is not protectable under U.S. copyright law. Works that are not “fixed” are sometimes protected under legal systems created by individual states, and some countries protected works that are not fixed.
Images of Art. An important court decision in 1999 clarified the nettlesome question of whether “copy photography” of a public domain artwork is a new copyrighted creation.16 Whether the work is a recent Warhol or a public domain Rembrandt, many photographers have claimed a separate copyright in the photographic reproduction. The court ruled that a direct and accurate reproduction of the original painting lacks “originality” and is not protected by copyright.17 Photographic reproductions of works of art and other graphic images are important in many scholarly studies.
Alice may have art images in her study of architectural history. Belinda’s dissertation could have similar issues if, for example, she is analyzing the chemistry of art restoration. If the work is recent and still protected by copyright, such as a painting by Warhol or Picasso, the artist or the artist’s successors clearly have some rights in the image.
Expired Copyrights. Copyrights may last a long time, but they do eventually expire, and the works enter the public domain. The U.S. Constitution specifies that copyrights shall last only for “limited times,” and the current law grants privileges in most cases for the life of the author, plus 70 years. For many dissertations, identifying works to use that are in the public domain can be enormously important.
Works Created in or after 1978:
- Works Created on or after January 1, 1978: As a general proposition, the copyrights last for the life of the author, plus 70 years. All copyrights expire at the end of the year. As an example, the author Saul Bellow died on April 5, 2005. His copyrights created in and after 1978 will enter the public domain at the end of the day on December 31, 2075. This rule applies to all types of works, and regardless of whether the work is published or unpublished.
- Works Made for Hire created on or after January 1, 1978: If the work is made “for hire,” such as a work created by an employee acting within the scope of employment, the duration depends on whether the work is published or not.21 The copyright lasts for the shorter of either of these terms: 120 years from the date or creation, or 95 years from the date of publication. For example, your dissertation on business economics may be based on memos and internal correspondence of a major company. A document created in 1980 will have copyright protection through the year 2100. If it had been published in 1985, the copyright will instead expire at the end of 2080. Either way, the copyright has a long time still in store. The same rules apply to anonymous and pseudonymous works.
Works Created before 1978:
- Works created and published before 1978: As a general rule, works published before 1978 have a maximum of 95 years of protection. In a convoluted statutory twist, this rule applies only to works published on or after January 1, 1923. Works published before 1923 are in the public domain. An important variation on this rule is detailed below.
- Works created before 1978 and not Published: If the work has never been published, the copyright last for the terms outlined above. The general rule is life of the author plus 70 years. For example, because the author F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, his copyrights in unpublished materials entered the public domain in the U.S. at the end of the year 2010. His letters, journals, photographs, and other works that were never published are now in the public domain. If the unpublished material is deemed to be works made for hire, then the copyrights last for the term of 120 years. The copyright in an internal corporate memo from 1880 expired and entered the public domain at the end of 2000.
- Works created before 1978, but published before the end of 2002: Before the copyright revisions that took effect in 1978, the copyright in unpublished works lasted in perpetuity. The time limit on copyright duration did not begin until the author or other rightsholder chose to publish the work. As a result, the papers of George Washington and other writers from the distant past were long restricted by copyright law. Congress brought perpetual protection to an end, but it allowed owners a grace period through December 31, 2002. If the rightful owner of a copyright from the past were to publish it by that date, Congress gave assurance that the copyright would not expire before December 31, 2047.26 For example, Mark Twain died in 1910. His papers have been curated at the University of California, Berkeley, where many of them were rather formalistically published in 2001 in microfilm at the hefty price of $50,000. Few buyers showed up, but the act of publishing was accomplished. Instead of expiring at the end of 2002, the Twain copyrights were thus stretched through 2047. As a researcher trying to determine whether materials are in the public domain, this provision means you may have to track the full publishing history of the works.
Consider again the basic rule that a publication from before 1978 may be protected for up to 95 years. It is possible that the copyright expired sooner, depending on compliance with the “formalities” of notice and registration as were once required. Under the law before 1978, a formal copyright notice (such as “Copyright 1940, Dolores B. Author”) was required. Upon publication with a proper notice, the copyright lasted for a term of 28 years. By filing a renewal registration with the Copyright Office in the twenty-eighth year, the term could be extended to what is now a total of 95 years. If a published work from 1940, for example, were renewed in 1968, the copyright would remain in force until 2035. Such a work had two chances to enter the public domain: It might have been published without a notice or with a defective notice and entered the public domain in 1940; or the copyright owner might have neglected to renew the copyright and it entered the public domain in 1968. As a result, it is possible to investigate specific works published between the beginning of 1923 and the end of 1963 to determine whether they are in the public domain.
Investigating these possibilities can involve research in the law, the facts, and the registration and renewal records. Registration records are public, and the Copyright Office will conduct searches for a fee. Computer online searches are also available through some database providers and on the Internet. A current study at the University of Michigan is leading to identification of numerous books in the public domain due to failure to renew the copyrights. These publications and many other public domain works from 1923 to 1964 are being opened for access on HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, and other online services.
The Importance of Fair Use
Nearly every dissertation includes some example of a fair use of copyrighted works.
Whenever you work with materials from other sources, your general strategy should be to keep all options open. First, your strongest option is to identify some materials as public domain. Second, you will sometimes need to secure permission. You may have to track down rightsholders, or in other instances the permission may be granted up front in the form of Creative Commons or other license. Third, fair use permits the limited use of some copyrighted works without permission from the copyright owner. Fair use is especially applicable to scholarly research and study, but it does not allow everything. The following summary offers an overview of the factors that you need to evaluate and weigh in the balance, and it wraps up with examples and a few practical suggestions about common fair use situations.
What is Fair Use?
Fair use is an exception to the rights of copyright owners. Few countries have a concept akin to fair use, but it is a central part of U.S. law. Congress articulated the framework of the law in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright with four factors that had been developed through a long history of court decisions: (1) The purpose and character of the use; (2) The nature of the copyrighted work used; (3) The amount and substantiality of the work used; and (4) The effect of the use on the market or potential market for the work.
Keep in mind that all four factors work together in the fair use equation. Be careful not to reach hasty conclusions, such as assuming that all academic uses are “fair” or that all commercial uses are not fair use. You also need not satisfy all four factors; courts balance them to identify their dominant disposition.
If you are looking for additional guidance to and resources to help you make more detailed applications of fair use, consider these websites:
Conclusion
Return to an opening point of this manual: You should take the time to learn and apply copyright in order to make your dissertation and your scholarly study more successful. How is that possible?
First, by clarifying your ownership of the dissertation, registering the copyright, and deciding whether a Creative Commons license is appropriate can help resolve issues that may arise as other scholars use of your dissertation. Second, by taking the time to review all of the third-party content that you are including in the dissertation, you can resolve in advance that the materials are in the public domain, or are within fair use, or require permission. With advance attention to these issues, you can prevent questions or conflicts that might arise in the future and stall your progress toward publication or jeopardize availability of your dissertation through your repository or the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database (PQDT).
Copyright is an inevitable aspect of scholarly research. Many of these issues will continue to arise in all of your academic pursuits. With each project or publication, the issues will become easier to address, and the constructive aspects of copyright will become more clear. For now, however, you can look forward to getting over the few copyright hurdles leading to filing your final dissertation and receiving the honor of a graduate degree. Congratulations!
