Copyright for researchers

At Manchester Met, you own your intellectual property rights (IPR) unless:

• You’re a postgraduate student receiving a University studentship - in which case such IPR will be owned by the University subject to any alternative arrangements with you
• You’re a postgraduate student receiving a bursary from, or have your fees paid or subsidised by, a sponsor - in which case ownership of such IPR will be subject to the arrangement between you, the University and your sponsor
• You generate IPR which builds upon existing IPR generated by, or is jointly invented with, University employees or associates
• You’re also an employee of the University and developed the IPR in that capacity

The University may be willing to support protection and commercialisation of student-owned IPR.

For full details, check the Manchester Metropolitan University’s Intellectual Property Rights Policy document

You should think about copyright issues from the outset - before starting to gather any data or conduct fieldwork. Copyright issues also overlap with, and are sometimes mistaken for, wider ethical issues. These might include how you can use the data that is collected from other sources, or obtaining consent to use people’s names and ideas. Manchester Met has guidance on ethics in research which you should also read. Any questions regarding research ethics should be sent to [email protected].

When re-using data collected from others, it’s important to clarify what you want to do with the information they give you. One example is if you take photos of people who are clearly identifiable, you must obtain their permission if you wish to include these in your thesis, even if you own the copyright in the photos. There may also be confidentiality issues in many disciplines, so data may need to be anonymised. If others supply you with data or information and you wish to republish it in your thesis, you’ll need to establish who owns the copyright and obtain their permission.

Manchester Met theses must be deposited in Manchester Met’s Research Repository e-space. E-space is an open access institutional repository through which theses are made publicly available to download. See the next section for all the advantages to having your research available in e-space.

All works deposited in Manchester Met’s e-space are done so under the RKE’s Graduate School EThOS Deposit Agreement, by which you grant e-space a non-exclusive licence to make your thesis available online. Included in the agreement is a statement to the effect that you have exercised reasonable care to ensure that work within your thesis is original, and does not break any UK law or infringe any third party’s copyright or other IPR.

Once you’ve completed your viva exam and made any revisions, the Graduate School will send your thesis to the Library’s e-space team who will make it available in the repository for you.

There are numerous advantages to putting your PhD thesis into e-space, including:

• Increasing the visibility and reach of your research. Theses deposited in e-space appear prominently in search engine results and are indexed by sources such as the British Library’s EThOS service (http://ethos.bl.uk/). Several studies also suggest that research that’s available via open access is more likely to be read and cited.
• Providing a stable, long-term URL that you can use to promote your work, refer potential collaborators, employers and grant providers to, and enable and track citations and downloads of your PhD.
• Ensuring long-term preservation and access to your research.
• Satisfying the open access requirements of funding bodies, such as UKRI.
• Protecting against plagiarism by making a reference copy publicly available.
• Enabling access to usage statistics to show how often the thesis is downloaded.

Although depositing your thesis in e-space isn’t formal publication in the traditional sense, you need to be aware that in depositing your thesis in e-space the full text of your work is discoverable and accessible online. If you’re using work from other sources, even your own, then you should acknowledge this via citations to the material. If the content of a chapter is used in a publication in the same form then some publishers may request your thesis is embargoed or removed from the repository until after publication.

So you’ve already had work published and want to include some of this work in your thesis. Although the material is your own work, as part of the publication process, publishers will often request that you transfer copyright or assign an exclusive right to publish, in the form of a Copyright Transfer Agreement or Contributor’s agreement. While most publishers allow you to keep the rights to distribute your own final version of your published work following peer-review, there are often certain conditions on this re-use. If you plan on using your own published work in your thesis, remember to discuss this with your publisher, preferably as soon as your work is accepted for publication. You can also check the publisher’s policies on copyright and self-archiving from the Sherpa Romeo website: www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php

If you’re going down the PhD by Publication route, you won’t be able to include the published version of any articles, please consult the Research Regulations and Guidance page  - in particular Regulations for Postgraduate Research Degrees - PhD by Published Works.

Firstly, you will need to identify who owns the work you wish to use e.g. publisher, author or artist. For material on a website there may be a section about copyright or it may be included in the terms & conditions of use.

You may find relevant contact details from PLS Clear (http://www.plsclear.com/). You must be as specific as possible about the material you’d like to use (include page numbers when possible), and where it will be reproduced. Also please make the rights owner aware that your thesis will be made available in Manchester Met’s e-space repository.

Permissions letter for researchers

The length of time it takes to obtain copyright permission is variable depending on individual copyright holders - some people may take ages to respond or not reply at all. Be aware - if you don’t get a response this does not give you permission to use the work! Remember to allow enough time (several weeks at the least) to obtain permission - it’s better to request permission early on in the process of producing your thesis. Also, some permissions may incur a charge, especially if you want to publish the thesis at a later stage.

If you have taken reasonable steps but have been unable to obtain permission to include material protected by copyright in your thesis or work, you should remove the material. Please indicate where material has been removed using the following message: This [delete where appropriate] image/photo/screenshot/map/graph, [insert title or short description], has been removed as the copyright is owned by another organisation or individual.

If you need to use someone else’s copyright-protected work, there are some exceptions to copyright law for research and private study.

These are subject to the ‘fair dealing’ test. This means you need to consider whether your use of someone else’s work is fair, for example:  

• using it in a way that stops them from selling the work
• making use of it in the way they want to
• using more of the work than you need to for your purpose.

Another way to think about fairness is how would you feel if it was your own work being used by someone else. 

Deciding on whether something is fair will always vary depending on the nature of the use. If you’re unsure about it, contact us .

By using fair dealing, you may be permitted to carry out copying without seeking permission from the owner or copying under license.