Copyright is the legal right that protects the use of your intellectual work. It is is applied automatically as soon as you have given your work a tangible expression, for example when you have written it down. Unlike patents or trademarks, copyright does not have to be registered.
Ulster University is the first legal owner of copyright of any intellectual material created in the course of your employment. However, the University does not claim the rights to scholarly works produced by its employees - for example books, articles, or conference papers - so the copyright of such works rests with you as the author.
If you are a PhD student, you have agreed to assign to the University the copyright of all your preliminary drafts and/or earlier versions of your thesis, with some exceptions. This is done to enable the University to make use of any intellectual property generated by your work. When you submit the final version of your thesis, the copyright is reassigned to you, either immediately or after a period of embargo.
⇒ Read the University Copyright Policy.
♦ As an author, you own the copyright to any scholarly work resulting from your research, and it is up to you to decide how to manage your rights.
♦ Copyright ownership falls into two categories: moral rights and economic rights.
♦ Your right to attribution is a moral right. It is non-transferable: it cannot be sold or assigned to anybody else.
♦ Economic rights can be sold or transferred. They allow the owner to authorise or prohibit reproduction, distribution, lending, and adaptation of the work.
⇒ Explore the topic on the Intellectual Property Office website.
It is an international non-profit organisation that has released several copyright licences, known as Creative Commons (CC) licences. These are open access licences which enable creators to share their works with the public free of charge. Unlike in traditional publishing where the author transfers the copyright to the publisher, under a CC licence the author retains the copyright and communicates the terms of permitted reuse through the chosen type of licence.
Each Creative Commons licence is made up of one or more of these four elements:
Attribution is the core element of all CC licences. It means that appropriate credit must be given to the copyright owner.
This is the default licence for works published by the UK government under crown copyright. Its terms and conditions are compatible with the CC BY licence. The OGL licence is accepted as an equivalent of CC BY by most research funding bodies.
Also known as copyleft, this licence is used mainly for software that is made available for free to all users. It is compatible with the CC BY-SA licence as it requires that all derivatives are shared with the public under the same terms as the original work.
GNU Free Documentation Licence
This licence is used mainly for textbooks and manuals. Version 1.3 is compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. Previous versions allow copying and distribution for commercial purposes, so they are incompatible with licences excluding commercial reuse.
A version of copyleft, more commonly known under its French name Licence Art Libre (LAL), this licence is used to grant free rights to copy, distribute, and transform creative works of art. Version 1.3 is compatible with CC BY-SA 4.0.
If your publication contains images, maps, tables, musical scores, extensive quotations, etc., from works that are under someone else's copyright, you may need to obtain permissions from the copyright owners to include them in your publication. This includes your own works for which you assigned the copyright to the publisher.
Limited reuse of third-party copyright material is allowed under the so-called 'fair dealing' exception to the copyright law. However, in some cases you may want to include material that cannot be used without the copyright holder's permission.
If the third-party copyright material has been published under an open access licence (e.g. a type of Creative Commons), you may be able to include parts of it in your publication without requesting permissions from the copyright holder. Note that the CC BY-NC licence can limit your right to reuse the material if your publication is behind a paywall.
If you need help in managing third-party copyright material or requesting permissions, get in touch with the Open Research Librarian.
Follow the steps to select the appropriate licence for your work in this interactive licence chooser.
Download Creative Commons logos, icons and badges for use in your work.
Need advice on copyright or licensing?
Open Government Licence (OGL)
GNU General Public Licence
Free Art Licence (FAL)
