Theses subject to an embargo are not accessible digitally or in hard copy until the embargo period elapses. Embargoes may be applied to protect the rights of the author whilst they explore opportunities for publication, or where sensitive information is held within the thesis.
If there are reasons why you feel that your thesis should not be made available, an embargo period can be requested via the Graduate School.
Before submitting your thesis, you should consider whether there is anything contained within it for which you do not own the rights, for example photographs or other images, video clips or film, diagrams, quotations or lyrics from other works, any or all of which have been produced by someone else. If your thesis does contain 3rd Party Copyright material for which you have not requested permission to make available publicly, you need to declare this when you submit your thesis, and seek permission where appropriate. See further down this page for more information regarding obtaining permission and third party copyright.
All works deposited in the repository are done so under a deposit agreement, by which a non-exclusive license is granted to the University to make your thesis available online. Included in this agreement is a statement to the effect that you are either the owner of the copyright in the thesis and the contents thereof, or are duly authorised by the copyright holder to make the work available.
Open Access is the immediate, online, availability of scholarly literature, free of charge, often coupled with the rights to use these articles in their entirety in the digital environment. Open Access increases the potential audience of your work, while still allowing you to retain copyright.
For the majority of publishers making your thesis available does not constitute prior publication and so it is unlikely to affect the ability to get work based on your thesis published in future, for example in academic journals or as a monograph. However, some publishers may take a stricter view of what constitutes publication. More information on publisher policies can be found via the Sherpa Romeo database.
There are a number of advantages to making your thesis available.
Third party copyright is content that you may use in your thesis that comes from other sources. It might be quotations or data, images, charts or graphs, that you wish to include.
Substantial use of this type of content may require permission to include in your thesis unless there is a clear statement on the work saying that it can be re-used. It will be necessary to apply an element of judgement over whether your use of third party content falls under an exception to UK copyright law based on whether it is considered “fair”. For example, the use of a single screenshot from a large website, or the use of a low resolution version of an image for the purposes of quotation, criticism and review. These decisions need to be made on a case by case basis and advice should be sought early if you feel it is not appropriate or necessary to obtain permission and wish to rely on a copyright exception.
Further information is available on the Copyright User website.
In order to obtain permission you will first need to identify who owns the work you wish to use. For material on a website, many pages now have a section about copyright (or terms and conditions of use).
You should not assume that if a rights owner does not respond to you then they have given permission to use their work.
If you receive permission to include copyright protected material, you should save any correspondence with the copyright holders and indicate that permission has been received at the appropriate point in the body of your thesis.
What if I can’t get copyright clearance for copyright material included in my thesis?
If you have taken reasonable steps but cannot gain permission to include material protected by copyright in your thesis, you will need to submit two electronic versions:
Alternatively, if you have made reasonable efforts to contact the copyright owner, we can add your thesis to Roehampton Research Explorer and make use of our take-down policy if contacted by copyright holders.
We encourage you to seek advice on copyright issues throughout the process of writing your thesis. Understanding copyright issues is important preparation for future academic publishing.
For queries regarding copyright and submitting your electronic thesis, please contact openaccess@roehampton.ac.uk.
For general copyright advice see the links below.
Useful Links
The above text is a derivative of “LSE (2016) Copyright and your thesis: a guide for research students” used under CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.