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Copyright: Theses & Dissertations

An overview of copyright and how it affects education and research.

What to Consider

Copyright for Dissertations and Theses

Copyright will likely affect graduate students as they work on their dissertations and theses related to both their own content and they content from others that they want to reuse. Students should keep copyright in mind throughout the process, including researching, writing, and submitting their final thesis or dissertation to ProQuest and UNR's institutional repository, ScholarWolf.

Planning Research

  • If a student's thesis or dissertation project will involve reusing data, survey instruments, or research products from someone else's work, they should consider whether that work is protected by copyright. For instance, quantitative data is normally considered to be in the public domain and free of copyright, but survey instruments, images, and videos are likely protected.
  • Students might be able to rely on fair use to reuse these works, but they might need to ask for permission.

Using Published Articles as Part of a Thesis/Dissertation

If students plan on using published articles as part of their thesis or dissertation, check BEFORE submitting a manuscript to a journal to see if the journal allows for this. Paywalled journals traditionally require authors to sign over their copyright, which means students no longer have the explicit right to then upload copies of the articles as part of their thesis or dissertation to ProQuest and ScholarWolf.

  • Many journals have a policy that specifically says authors can reuse their work in this way - but not all do. MIT has a helpful list of publisher policies that students can consult.
  • Also, if students publish an article as open access under a Creative Commons license, most journals will let them keep their copyright and they still have the right to deposit their thesis or dissertation. Also, most Creative Commons licenses allow for deposit as well.
  • Some journals will have policies specific to theses and dissertations, but for those that don't, they might have a policy on how authors can use the submitted (i.e. the version that has not been peer reviewed) or accepted version (i.e. it has been peer reviewed and accepter for publication but not formatted for publishing) of an article. In this case, students might be able to upload one of these versions as part of their project.
  • Students can check Sherpa/Romeo for more guidance on this or contact Librarian Teresa Schultz at teresas@unr.edu for help.
  • Other policies will allow submitting versions of an article but only to certain sites, such as not-for-profit repositories. This could cause problems with UNR's process as students are required to submit their paper to ProQuest, a for-profit company. 
  • Students can also review ProQuest's guidelines on this issue.

Submitting to ProQuest

The ProQuest submission portal for theses and dissertations will prompt students with several questions related to embargoes and copyright.

  • Students may choose how long, if at all, they wish to embargo their project with ProQuest (up to two years) and then separately with ScholarWolf, UNR's institutional repository (up to two years).
  • The embargos can help protect works that students wish to patent or that they hope to still publish as a book or journal article. Most journal publishers do not consider theses and dissertations as prior publication and thus immediately sharing a thesis or dissertation will not be a problem.
  • If students aren't sure, they can identify a few journals they wish to submit to and review their policies; students can contact Teresa Schultz at teresas@unr.edu for help with this.

ProQuest will also ask students if they wish to register their copyright with the federal government; ProQuest charges a fee for this.

  • Registration is no longer needed for copyright protection in the United States; theses and dissertations are automatically protected by copyright as soon as they are made.
  • Registering a copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office does bring some benefits - for instance, if someone wishes to file a copyright infringement lawsuit, the work needs to be registered.
  • Students can register a work any time even if they do not opt to have ProQuest do this for them.