Design

Copyright

Introduction

Copyright is a set of exclusive property rights given to owners of original written and artistic works such as books, films, drawings and photographs.

Usually, original works cannot be copied without the creator’s permission, which would prevent you from including original works, such as images, in your thesis. However, there is a legal exception which allows material to be copied for research and study purposes. This means you can include copyrighted material such as images in your thesis for it to be examined.

However, a potential problem arises when you submit your thesis to the University Library. If you are about to graduate, you must supply one print and one digital copy of the final version of your thesis to the Library. The digital copy will be deposited in our online research repository, ResearchArchive. Because this archive is freely available to the public, the legal exemption that allows you to include original images in your thesis without permission no longer applies. Therefore you must seek permission for any third party material, such as images, that you plan to include in your thesis. 

For more information

Thesis Self Deposit: A guide to formatting your thesis in preparation for depositing in the Library.

Copyright in research for students: A guide to copyright in research provided by Victoria.