Here you will find key services and resources that will help support you during your academic life at GCU.
Thesis copyright guide
Copyright infringement has similarities with plagiarism. Both arise from misusing other people’s material and they often overlap.
Plagiarism is a matter of academic integrity. It arises mainly from using the material or the ideas of others without acknowledgement and presenting them as if they were your own work.
Copyright is a legal issue. Infringement occurs when you reuse material created by others without permission from the copyright owner. If you infringe copyright there can be legal consequences.
Copyright is also separate from research ethics, research data management, confidentiality and data protection but copyright concerns may arise in conjunction with those topics. Copyright issues may also arise with datasets which accompany your thesis, depending on the nature of the data and how it is organised. “Raw facts and figures” are not generally protected but data in the form of photographs or videos are likely to be protected by copyright.
Contact the library research team if you have any questions regarding copyright and your thesis: libraryresearch@gcu.ac.uk.
Copyright and your thesis: checklist
Types of third party copyright works
Extracts include text or tables from, for example, books, journal articles, manuscripts or computer programs.
You may be able to reproduce an extract under fair dealing exceptions but how much you may copy is not legally defined and you will need to judge for yourself how likely it is that the copyright holder would object to your actions. If in doubt seek permission.
Artistic works include images, figures, photographs or graphs.
You hold the copyright for any unpublished artistic works you create.
Seek permission to reproduce any other artistic work, including those on the internet.
Check the text associated with an image as the rights may belong to someone other than the creator of the image.
If an image is on a website there may be a licence associated to it (for example images licensed "all rights reserved" may not be used without permission, but those with a Creative Commons licence may).
Some people post artistic works on the web when they do not have the right to do so. Reusing these images, even with their permission, is high risk.
If the photograph is of an item in a museum or gallery, seek the permission of the museum, gallery or artist - there may be information on their website.
When including your own photographs of other people make sure you have their permission if they can be easily identified (unless they are incidental as part of the background). Consider the ethics of using photographs of people, for example photos of children, images of a sensitive nature, or photographs of people now deceased which may distress their family.
Treat maps as artistic works.
Ordnance Survey maps
Ordnance Survey maps older than 50 years can be reproduced without permission. Seek permission to reproduce more recent Ordnance Survey maps.
You may reproduce maps from Digimap (but not digital data) under the terms of our Digimap licence.
Google maps
Google allow their maps to be used non-commercially in books, research papers and other related publications as long as your use is fair, you abide by their terms of use and attribute them as the creator. See Google's guidelines for more details.
Databases are either protected by copyright law as literary works or by database right.
Websites and web pages are protected by copyright in the same way as print materials. However in many cases there will be a licence which extends the usual permissions.
Creative Commons: you may reproduce works offered under a Creative Commons licence. Make sure you acknowledge the creator of the work and which licence was used.
E-journal and e-book licences: seek permission to include a whole paper, whole figure, or more than a short paragraph of text.
Websites: check website terms and conditions - usually displayed at the bottom of the page. Seek permission if your intended use is not covered (the phrase ‘private non-commercial use’ does not cover reproduction in your thesis).
Some of the content on this page has been reproduced with the permission of University College London and Imperial College London.
