E-Theses service

The copyright of a thesis normally belongs to the author, but this ownership may be assigned in the following instances:

• by written agreement – either specifically or as part of an undertaking between the researcher and the awarding institution when the research first began
• where the research has been sponsored in whole or in part by an outside body that has required assignment of copyright as a condition of sponsorship
• if the awarding institution employs the researcher to undertake the work, the copyright automatically belongs to the employer, unless a contract has been entered into by both parties specifying otherwise

In all of the above circumstances, you would need to gain the permission of the copyright holder(s) before depositing your thesis in the LJMU E-Theses Collection (or other open access repositories e.g. EThOS).

Third party copyright material can be included in a thesis for examination purposes. Third party material includes extracts or quotations from publications (such as: books, journals, conference papers, theses etc) and illustrations (such as: tables, figures, photos, maps etc.). Copyright also applies to materials obtained from internet sources.

If your thesis is to be made available electronically in an Open Access repository, then you will need to seek the permission of the copyright holder(s) to include any third party material.

There are exceptions to this need to request permission which include:

• cases where the author has been dead for at least 70 years 
• if the work has been published under a Creative Commons License (which allows reuse of the material) 
• the use of extracts or quotations is for the purpose of “criticism and review” and where the extracts are: from previously published sources, properly acknowledged and referenced, not substantial 

Use of extracts under these exceptions can be defended as “fair dealing”. This essentially allows limited copying without permission, provided it is fair and the commercial interests of the rights holder are not damaged. 

If the third party copyright material within your thesis consists of a short quotation from a published work and you have acknowledged and referenced it adequately, then it will probably not be necessary to seek permission from the copyright holder. However, copyright law does not define what is meant by a short extract. If in doubt, it is best to seek permission.

You are strongly advised to clear all rights and obtain all permissions for material from third party copyright holders as you gather your resources and write up your thesis, rather than leaving it to the point at which you are required to deposit it in the LJMU E-Theses Collection. Not doing so may delay the release of your degree certificate once you have completed your award.

If you intend to include material that you yourself have had published (for example, journal articles) you need to check if the publisher will permit you to include it in your thesis. Most publishers permit this, but the easiest way to check is by contacting the publisher directly. A sample permission seeking template (Word, 34KB) is available.

To seek permission to include third party material within the electronic version of your thesis, you need to contact the rights holder. This may be the author of a work, the publisher or an illustrator.

For material from books or journals, you should first contact the publisher. Many publishers give details on their websites on how to seek permission and who to contact. Look for information on rights, permissions or copyright clearance. If the publisher does not hold the rights to the work, they should forward your enquiry to whoever does.

Once you have established who to contact you can use this permission seeking template (Word, 34KB) to form the basis of a letter or e-mail to the rights holder, asking permission to include the material in the electronic version of your thesis.

If the rights holder does not reply immediately, you may choose to contact them again. Please note that you may not deem a lack of response as permission to include the material in the version that will be made public.

If a copyright holder indicates that permission has been granted, you should indicate this at the appropriate point in your thesis. For example: “Permission to reproduce this ... has been granted by...”.

Keep a copy of any letters or emails you receive from rights holders. The correspondence should then be collated into a document and deposited along with your thesis as an additional file. For example, date-surname-phd-permissions.pdf or .doc.

Access to this document will be restricted to repository administrators only. The document will be made available to the thesis author should any copyright issues arise in the future.

If you need to include third party copyright material in your thesis and you are unable to obtain permission, or you are asked to pay to do this, you will not be able to make the full version of the thesis publicly available online.

You will instead need to deposit two versions of your thesis. The full version which is the final passed version and includes all the third party copyright material and an edited version for public view. For the edited version you will need ensure all the third party material (for which permission has not been granted to reproduce in the repository) has been removed or hidden. 

One suggestion is to use a placeholder note where the text or other content has been removed. For example:

The [insert description here, for example, image/diagram/map/text] originally presented here cannot be made freely available via LJMU E-Theses Collection because of [insert 'copyright' or other reason here]. The [image/diagram/map/text] was sourced at [insert details of where the item originated such as bibliographic reference, publication details, URL or other relevant details here].

Removing content and adding notes may disrupt the pagination of the electronic version. If necessary, you should consider using the ‘page break’ function to retain the original pagination of the final full version submitted for examination.

Apart from removing restricted content and replacing it with a note, no other changes should be made to the text of the edited version – this should remain the same as the final passed version.

If you have obtained copyright permission for all third party material in your thesis, deposit one electronic copy of the full version of your thesis. 

If you have been unable to obtain copyright permission for all or some of the third party material in your thesis, deposit two electronic versions of your thesis:

• the full version, with all third party material retained (even if you have not been able to obtain third party copyright permission)
• an edited version, with any copyright material for which permission has not been granted or sought removed

Only the edited version will be made publicly available.

If your thesis has been commercially sponsored, you may have signed an agreement with your sponsor that does not permit you to make it publicly available, whether for a limited period of time or in perpetuity.

If you are in this position, you should indicate this on the E-Thesis Access Declaration and Deposit Agreement form (accessible via eDoc, if you do not have access, please contact PGR Examinations). You will still be required to supply an electronic copy of your thesis, but LJMU will not to make it publicly available online in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

If you have been unable to obtain copyright permission for all, or some of the third party material in your thesis, you must deposit two electronic versions of your thesis:

1. the full version, with all third party copyright material retained (even if you have not been able to obtain third party copyright permission)
2. an edited version, with any copyright material for which permission has not been granted or sought removed

Only the edited electronic version will be made publicly available; the full version will not.

Other than the above conditions, there are a range of reasons why it may be necessary to restrict access to your thesis the most common of which are:

• Your thesis contains commercially sensitive information, the release of which might prejudice the commercial interests of any person including the author, the University or an external company
• Your thesis includes material that was obtained under a promise of confidentiality
• The release of your thesis might endanger the physical or mental health or safety of an individual
• Publication would cause you or third parties mentioned in the text to be open to legal challenge or racial, ethnic, political or other persecution
• Your thesis is due for publication, either as a series of articles or as a monograph and the publisher does not allow prior publication of the thesis. Authors may check with journals in question whether a thesis in the repository would be counted as published
• Your thesis may contain the personal information of third parties which is restricted under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

You should talk to your Director of Studies when establishing if there is a need to restrict access to your thesis. Your Director of Studies is required to sign the E-Thesis Access Declaration and Deposit Agreement form to confirm that they agree with your decision on restricting access to your thesis.