Your research outputs including research papers, datasets, diagrams and practice based research are likely to be protected by copyright . Depending on the nature of your research they may also be protected by other types of intellectual property such as patents or design rights.
The university's Policy on Exploitation and Commercialisation of Research and Intellectual Property provides more information.
When your manuscript is accepted, your publisher will typically require you to sign a copyright agreement, often referred to as the Copyright Transfer Agreement. This usually involves transferring the ownership of the output to the publisher and, depending on the terms of the agreement, you may not be permitted to re-use the content from the publication without obtaining the publisher's permission. In some cases, if you request to amend the copyright agreement, the publisher may allow you to retain the copyright
Publications which are made available under a Creative Commons licence enable the author to retain the copyright and allow others to freely access, copy and use research, providing the author is correctly attributed.
The University of Sussex's Publications and Copyright Policy empowers authors to retain the rights to their research outputs by granting the University a non-exclusive licence to make manuscripts of scholarly articles and conference papers publicly available, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence without embargo. This enables researchers to retain their rights on subsequent reuse and disseminate their research and scholarship as widely as possible.
Third-party content is any material included in your work that belongs to someone other than yourself, such as images, photographs, tables, and maps from published and unpublished works. This may include your own previous work if the copyright was transferred to your publisher or to another person/organisation. This material is usually protected by copyright and you may need to obtain permission from the copyright owner
Your publishing agreement will state whether you or the publisher are responsible for obtaining permission to reuse copyrighted material in your work.
Copyright in a University of Sussex thesis belongs to the author unless a prior arrangement has been made with a funder or sponsor.
Before graduation, the successful PhD candidate is required to deposit their final thesis (including approved corrections) for preservation in Sussex Research Online [SRO], the University's platform for open research. The British Library harvests theses from the repository for EThOS, a searchable collection of theses from UK participating institutions and details of your thesis, sometimes including abstracts, are sent to various national, international and subject bodies, and bibliographies. Benefits to having your thesis discoverable online include
In the UK, as long as you have legal access to the original and your use is considered 'fair dealing', then you do not need the rights-holder's permission to reproduce their material with proper attribution in a thesis which has been submitted for examination. However, this legal exception no longer applies once your thesis has been examined and therefore, before you deposit your thesis to the SRO repository, you should ensure that you are not infringing anyone else's copyright, by seeking, if necessary, their permission to use any third party content.
If your thesis incorporates material that you have previously published , such as a journal article, remember that your publisher may own the copyright. Review the terms of your Agreement to Publish, and, if required, contact your publisher for permission to republish the material.
Third-party content is any material included in your work that belongs to someone other than yourself, such as images, photographs, tables, and maps from published and unpublished works. This may include your own previous work if the copyright was transferred to your publisher or to another person/organisation.
This material is usually protected by copyright and may mean that you need to obtain permission from the copyright owner. You will need to decide:
Has permission been granted by licence, such as a Creative Commons licence and is your use is within the terms of that licence. If your use is outside the terms of the licence you will need to request permission from the copyright owner.
If you do not get permission to use the third-party content in your work, you cannot use the material; a lack of response to your request does NOT constitute permission to go-ahead.
Further information:
You may need to identify and trace the present copyright owner to obtain their permission to use their work. For published works, the publisher is usually a good place to start and for older works, where the author has died, copyright may have passed on to their estate - the WATCH (Writers, Authors and their Copyright Holders) website is helpful in identifying contact details.
When you request permission to use the work, ensure you include your contact information, full details of the item, and explain how and where the material will be used. You will need to clarify if you plan to use the material in print, online or both.
When including third-party content in a publication, you must include an attribution with a copyright notice. Applicable to other publishers, Oxford University Press' Instructions for Authors include detailed guidance for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material. If the copyright owner asks for particular wording to be used, you should follow their requirements. Ensure that you keep all correspondence in case you need to refer to it at a later date.
If the copyright holder can't be traced, the material is defined as an 'orphan work'. The UK's Intellectual Property Office has developed a process for applying for a licence to copy an orphan work.
Collections held in archives may be subject to copyright and the archives service responsible for the collection will usually hold data relating to the deposit and ownership of the material. Ascertaining copyright ownership for archival and unpublished material can be a difficult and lengthy process so leave yourself plenty of time.
If the copyright holder can't be traced, the material is defined as an 'orphan work'. The UK's Intellectual Property Office has developed a process for applying for a licence to copy an orphan work.
Further information
For help with general queries about copying from print, audiovisual or digital publications, contact library.copyright@sussex.ac.uk
The information contained within these pages is intended as a general guide for members of the University of Sussex on copyright and copying of materials for learning, teaching and research at the university. It is not intended and should not be construed as legal advice.