Copyright and theses: information for students

Information on this webpage is reproduced from the Topics on Intellectual Property Series (TIPS) brochures produced by the Monash Research Graduate School.

• What is protected by copyright?
• Students as owners of copyright in their thesis
• Publishing research and authorship
• Using third-party copyright in your thesis
• Moral rights of the originators of copyright
• Further help

What is copyright?

A legal regime which protects the form in which ideas are expressed but not the ideas contained in the work.

Unlike other kinds of intellectual property, copyright protection arises automatically when a work is created. You do not have to apply for it or register it in the same way as you do for other types of intellectual property such as a patent. Generally speaking copyright lasts for your life time plus 70 years (see duration of copyright)

What is protected by copyright?

• literary and other works of text - for example, you retain the copyright of your thesis - the thesis and the data in which it is based will often be the only intellectual property resulting from your research project
• dramatic and musical works (eg plays and written music)
• images (eg photographs, technical drawings, diagrams graphs, maps, advertisements, artistic works)
• audio and audiovisual items (eg CDs, tapes, films, TV and sound broadcasts)
• published editions of works (eg while authors have copyright in text of their books publishers have copyright in the typographical layout of books)
• computer programs, software code

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As the owner of copyright (eg in your thesis) what may you do?

The Monash University Statutes relating to Intellectual Property establish that students, in most cases, retain copyright in their research and thesis, unless otherwise agreed.

However, the Doctoral program conducted at Monash requires that students grant Monash University a non-exclusive licence to publish their thesis online in the ARROW open-access research repository once the examination process is completed. Monash secures this licence agreement through the Thesis Contributor Agreement form, which is completed and provided to Monash Research Graduate School when your thesis copies are submitted for final examination.

The licence granted to Monash is not an assignment of copyright: it is similar to a grant of permission provided by you, as copyright holder in the thesis. Other researchers, including supervisors, wishing to publish a paper using data or content from your thesis will, likewise, need to seek your permission, or obtain a licence from you.  

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Publishing research

When submitting papers to professional journals, authors normally assign (relinquish) copyright to the journal publisher (see MRGS 'TIPS' sheet on Publication). Students need to be aware of this and to consider whether assigning copyright in their work will have an impact on the thesis.
The licence granted to Monash enabling the publication of the thesis online in ARROW is non-exclusive, so students are free to publish their thesis (in part or in whole) with an external publisher (eg within a conference proceedings or in a journal or as a book). In such cases the University will cease to provide open access to the full-text thesis online when requested by the publisher or author. The University will retain the right to supply the thesis, in whole or in part, in accordance with section 51 of the Copyright Act, to researchers requesting the thesis for their own personal research or study.

Authorship

If you co-write articles on your research with another researcher, you might not be entitled to attribution as the sole author of these publications. In many cases, your supervisor/s may be entitled to co-authorship, depending on the contributions they have made to the generation of the research or the writing of the article (see MRGS 'TIPS' sheet on authorship).

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Using third-party copyright in your thesis

Students may rely on the ‘Fair Dealing’ provision in the Copyright Act (Sections 40 and 103) for the creation and submission of a thesis for examination purposes. However, publishing a work is not considered a ‘Fair Dealing’. ‘Fair dealing’ only permits a student to use (reproduce or adapt) a copyright work without permission, for the purpose of private research or study (including examination purposes).  

As Monash requires PhD students to submit an e-thesis copy which will be published online in the ARROW open-access research repository, students will need to obtain copyright permissions for any third-party copyright material that they ultimately include in the final version of their thesis.

Refer to the detailed advice on seeking copyright permissions

For more specific information about applying for permissions refer to and the MRGS 'TIPS' sheet on seeking permission. Remember also that copyright owners may refuse permission or may charge a fee.

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Moral rights of the originators of copyright

Research students must be scrupulous in naming the author and source of any third-party content used in the thesis. Failure to do so will infringe the rights of the copyright owner under the moral rights provisions in the Copyright Act. Regardless of whether they retain copyright or not, an author always retains the right to be correctly attributed as author of their work; the right to prevent others being named as author of that work and the right to take action against derogatory treatment of their work if this is likely to damage their reputation (eg quoted out of context; images distorted or altered)

Send inquiries to the university's Copyright Advisor.