Including Third Party Copyright Material in your Thesis

Introduction

An electronic version of your thesis is going to be deposited in Surrey’s open access repository so you will need to seek permission if you want to include any third party copyright material, e.g. extracts from publications such as books or journals, or illustrations such as images, maps, photographs, tables etc.

Traditionally it has been accepted that third party copyright material can be included in the print version of a thesis without seeking permission, although it would be good academic practice to do this. However this is not the case if the thesis is going to be made available online.

Please note that while you are asked to make best efforts to seek permission to include third party copyright material in the electronic version of your thesis, you will not be penalised if it is not possible to clear copyright either because permissions are not granted, or because it would be too onerous or too expensive to obtain permissions. This simply means that you will not be able to make your thesis or the affected parts of your thesis freely available online. The outcome of your examination will not be affected in any way. No student will be required to make any payments to copyright holders for material they wish to include in their thesis.

When can you copy without permission?

Generally you will not need to seek permission to include:

• Work which is out of copyright.  An author’s copyright lasts for 70 years after the author’s death.  See Copyright Information for further details about copyright duration
• A short extract of a work in order to critique or review it
• A short quotation from a published work
• Material which is licensed for your intended use e.g. under a Creative Commons licence.

In all cases you should acknowledge and reference the source appropriately.

When do you need to seek permission?

Unless your use of third party material falls into one of the above categories you will need to seek permission from the copyright holder for its inclusion in your thesis.  Ideally you should do this as you go along rather than at the point of writing up your thesis.

If you intend to include material that you yourself have published, e.g. journal articles, you need to check whether the publisher will permit you to include these as part of your thesis.   The easiest way to do this is by contacting the publisher directly and checking: most publishers will permit this.  A sample template seeking permission to include material you have published is available.

How do you seek permission for third party material?

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

Once you have established whom to contact you can use this template seeking permission to include third party copyright material to form the basis of a letter or email to the rights holder asking permission to include the material in the electronic version of your thesis.  

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

What should you do if permission is granted?

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

What should you do if permission is not granted?  

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

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

1. Deposit two copies – one the full version with all third party copyright material retained and a second edited version with this material removed.  The edited electronic version will be made publicly available – the full version will not.
2. Deposit only the full version with third party copyright material retained.  This will not be made publicly available.

Other important information

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

Help and advice

If in doubt about whether you need to get permission to include any material within you thesis it is always best to err on the side of caution and assume that you do.  If you have specific queries you can send them to the Digital Collections Team or the Copyright and Digital Resources Adviser who will do their best to help you.

Further information

The Society of Authors, Quick guide to permissions. London: The Society, 2009.

On-line tutorial Copyright for Research Students

Including Third Party Copyright Material in your Thesis Leaflet

This information is reproduced and adapted by kind permission of the University of Glasgow Theses Service.