Copyright Considerations For Dissertation & Thesis Writers
Apart from fair use and its application to students’ scholarly work, there are copyright issues specific to thesis and dissertation development and deposit. Students often become aware of latent copyright issues at the end of their thesis or dissertation process, sometimes as late as just prior to deposit. These resources attempt to address these issues and provide some guidelines in managing them.
This chapter on dissertation preparation and copyright provides you with an outline of the basic copyright issues you may face in researching and drafting your dissertation.
Considerations while writing
Here are some examples, based on the document Copyright Law and Dissertation Preparation (PDF), that illustrate decision-making processes related to copyright that you may go through during the writing process.
Q: Are you integrating work written or created by others in your thesis or dissertation?
A: If so, is it copyright protected? If not, then you may be able to reproduce it without further assessment.
Q: If the work being integrated is copyright protected, can you justify your use as a fair one? The Fair Use Checklist (PDF) may help you make that determination.
A: If so, then you may go ahead and reproduce the work but keep a copy of your notes about your fair use assessment and attribute the author of the work.
Q: If not fair use, then do I have permission?
A: You will have to seek permission by contacting the rights holders of the work you are integrating into your thesis or dissertation should such use not be considered a fair one.
Q: Are you integrating work written or created by you but having already been published or released by a third party?
A: If so, is it copyright protected? If not, then you may be able to reproduce it without further assessment.
Q: If copyright is protected, did you sign a publishing agreement and did you assign all or part of your rights to the publisher?
A: If you assigned part or all of your rights to the publisher, then you may have to contact the publisher to seek permission to integrate your work into your thesis or dissertation so that it may also be distributed in Columbia's Academic Commons.
Q: Are you integrating work that you created previously with a group of authors so that copyright in the work is owned by you but jointly with others?
Q: If so, was it published previously?
Q: Did you and the other authors assign your rights to the publisher?
A:: If not, then you may be able to integrate the work into your dissertation.
Q: If the copyrights were assigned, did you retain the right to integrate your prior published work into your dissertation?
A: If so, then you have likely protected your rights adequately for dissertation purposes. If not, you will have to seek permission from the publisher.
Q: Is your dissertation or thesis going to be published and will you be remunerated?
A: If so, then you need to consider your joint authors rights since they likely have rights in sharing in your remuneration.
Considerations after depositing
You, as the dissertation author, in accordance with the Columbia University Copyright Policy, are the owner of your dissertation. It is illegal for your dissertation to be sold without your consent. The exception to this is if you have released your dissertation into the public domain by giving it a CC0 license or given it a Creative Commons (CC) license that allows for commercial reuse. (More about CC licenses.)
You are always able to request an embargo or an embargo extension for your dissertation in Academic Commons and/or ProQuest through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Dissertation Office (gsas-dissertations@columbia.edu). Embargos are typically granted for one or two years with the ability to request extensions. You can do this when you first publish your dissertation or at any point in the future. Decisions about granting embargos are made by GSAS.
As the author of your dissertation, you hold the copyright whether or not you register with the U.S. Copyright Office. Registering is not necessary for you to be able to assert ownership in your work. Note that the Copyright Claims Board is available for small claims up to $30,000 without copyright registration. You are also able to sue for non-monetary damages without registration.
However, registration of your copyright may help if you choose to pursue legal action for monetary damages against an unauthorized publisher. You can register directly with the U.S. Copyright Office. Use this option if you have already deposited your dissertation or if you would rather handle the registration process yourself. Go to https://www.copyright.gov/registration/ to learn about the process and fees.
Although each case is different, here are three example scenarios that may violate your ownership and copyright:
Someone has published your entire dissertation as a book without your permission
Someone has published your entire dissertation as a book - changing the author name and/or the title - without your permission
Someone has taken paragraphs, chapters, or content from your dissertation, beyond what you consider to be Fair Use, and integrated it into another work without your permission
In the case where you believe another academic has plagiarized your work (example 3, above), the Columbia Ombuds Office is a good first point of contact for support and mediation.
If your entire dissertation has been reproduced and sold, keep in mind that the person or people responsible are operating with different - sometimes elaborate - mechanisms to avoid being detected. Once you raise the alert with one platform, it will be more difficult to discover identifying information about the seller.
As the copyright owner, you will need to contact businesses selling an unauthorized version of your dissertation. Below are some links for reporting copyright infringement. Note that one report with Amazon should have your work removed from all Amazon properties that are listing the work for sale.
Additional Resources
- Additional resources from Columbia Libraries may be accessed in the menu on the right (desktop) or bottom (mobile) of this page.
- The Dissertation: Office Graduate School of Arts and Science
- Kernochan Center for Law Media and the Arts, Columbia Law School: Keep your Copyrights: An Introduction
The information presented by the Libraries about copyright is intended for information purposes, and should not be construed as legal advice.