| Monash home | About Monash | Faculties | Campuses | Contact Monash |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
| Monash home | About Monash | Faculties | Campuses | Contact Monash |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
|
Copyright and research students
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?
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 in some discipline areas 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. 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. AuthorshipIf 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). Using third-party copyright in your thesisStudents 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. The ‘Fair dealing’ allowance in the Copyright Act permits a student or researcher to use (reproduce or adapt) a copyright work without permission, for the purpose of their private research or study (including examination purposes). However, once a thesis (or other research output) is published, the student/researcher can no longer rely on this 'fair dealing' allowance as a blanket protection for any or all third-party content which may be included in the thesis. Once a work is published, 'fair dealing' operates in a much more limited way. For example, an author may rely on 'fair dealing' for the inclusion of limited amounts of another's work, on the grounds that those particular quotations or small excerpts have been reproduced specifically in order to review and critique them at that particular point in the text ('fair dealing for the purpose of criticism and review'). But an author couldn't safely rely on this 'criticism and review' justification just to cover any or all third-party content that may need to be included in their published paper or book. Students and researchers need to exercise even greater care when their publications include extracts from unpublished materials, especially if access to, and use of, those materials was granted 'in confidence' and on the basis that they would only be used for private research and study, or for the purposes of examination of the thesis. In such cases, the actual act of publishing such material may not be considered a 'fair dealing'. As Monash requires PhD students to submit an eThesis copy which will be published online in the ARROW open-access research repository, students 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. Moral rights of the originators of copyrightResearch 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) Further helpThe Monash Research Graduate School produces a series of brochures on theses and intellectual property. These Topics on Intellectual Property Series (TIPS) brochures can be obtained from the Monash Research Graduate School. Topics covered include:
See also: Monash University Intellectual Property Statute and Regulations Send an email inquiry to the University's Copyright Adviser. |