Should i copyright dissertation

If you must use copyrighted material, ensure you seek permission from the copyright owner. Therefore you need to be sure that you have permission to use any copyrighted material — including images, video, quotes, and trademarks — or have removed it in the version you upload.

You can use copyrighted material in the version that is not made public the version you submit for assessment , as long as the use is fair to the copyright owner and is crucial to your argument.

If you want to include your published work in your thesis, or publish work based on your thesis, you must consider who owns the copyright. Publishers will often require authors to assign copyright to them. If you sign a contract with a publisher, check to see whether you have the right to reproduce your material. Check any copyright agreements carefully. If you publish prior to submission of your thesis, and the publisher retains copyright, you may not be able to reproduce this material in your final thesis.

The University recommends that PhD students make their thesis available under a Creative Commons licence open access. Active 6 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 5k times. Improve this question. ZanCoul ZanCoul 2 2 silver badges 6 6 bronze badges. Any creative work is copyrighted by default as soon as it is written down or otherwise placed in a fixed medium , so as written, this question doesn't make much sense. Are you referring to registering your copyright with the US Copyright Office?

Or putting an explicit copyright notice on it? Or choosing not to release it under a more permissive license? Or something else? Copyright Office. I have edited the post to reflect your comment; but you should realize that your second paragraph doesn't really make a lot of sense, given how copyright works and the context of the question. You can register your copyright with the copyright office and still make it available with a permissive license; and not registering the copyright doesn't mean it isn't copyrighted.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Specifically, Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration is necessary for works of U. If made before or within five years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.

Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner. Based on your post, you seem to have some misconceptions about how copyright works. Note that: Even if you do not register the copyright, the work is still copyrighted. In the United States and many other countries, a creative work is protected by copyright automatically as soon as it is written down or otherwise placed in a fixed medium.

Even if you do register the copyright, you can still make the work available under a permissive license, such as a Creative Commons license. It's publication or deposit in ProQuest's dissertations database or in the UNL DigitalCommons provides an independently verified date of record. So— No, you do not need to copyright your dissertation; that happens already automatically. ProQuest asks if my dissertation is already or previously copyrighted.

What does that mean? Do I answer yes or no? Sometimes, on rare occasions, a graduate degree is awarded based on a document that has already been published and copyrighted before it is deposited as an official dissertation. If that is the case, answer "yes. ProQuest asks if I wish for them to register the copyright in my dissertation; what does that mean? Copyrights can be but are not required to be "registered" with the U.

Copyright Office. This used to be required to get the protection of copyright for the full term, but that is no longer the case.