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Ask Slashdot: Best Copyright Terms For a Thesis?

Posted by timothy on from the try-the-must-pay-my-loan-license dept.

plopez gets in his first Slashdot submission with this question, writing: "I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me. I know the joke is 'No one will ever read your thesis,' but in the slim chance it is useful to others I don't want them to be required to hunt me down for a release. Basically I want to say: 'Copyright is released as long as this work or excerpts is properly attributed. Also, any published excerpts cannot be copyrighted by other parties, nor can the original work in its entirety.' Is this good enough? I don't want to encumber legitimate uses of the work but I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain. Is public domain good enough? Or does it allow the work to be restricted by commercial interests? I know of copyleft, but copyleft is a family of copyright notices and I am unsure which one is right for my intent. Please help."

34 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Creative commons! by NalosLayor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Creative commons has a tool to help, and human readable licenses. I'd guess you can find what you need there. http://creativecommons.org/

    1. Re:Creative commons! by paulschreiber · · Score: 2, Informative

      danah boyd did this: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/02/18/licensing_your.html

    2. Re:Creative commons! by NeutronCowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      And what he's probably looking for is CC BY-ND. "This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you."

      --
      Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
    3. Re:Creative commons! by melikamp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Darn, my mod points just expired :) This is pretty much exactly what the OP asked for. Although, OP said "I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain", so may be CC BY-SA is more up to the task. It all depends on whether derivative works that go beyond verbatim quotation are desirable.

    4. Re:Creative commons! by The+Famous+Brett+Wat · · Score: 2

      CC-BY-ND is what I used for my thesis. Given that the default copyright status of any work such as a thesis is "all rights reserved", I don't see how this can be a bad thing: it's just an explicit waiver of certain rights. Attribution and originality are considered important in a typical "western" academic environment (maybe elsewhere also -- I wouldn't know), and that's all the "BY" and "ND" parts assert. In fact, the "BY" and "ND" parts are intended to preserve the integrity of the work for the sake of clarity in future references: if there's an interesting remark in there that you want to quote, it's important that you have a proper reference for it (BY) and that you can be reasonably sure it's what the author actually said (ND). Just slapping a CC-BY-ND on it doesn't magically make it happen, of course, but it expresses the intended use well.

      In response to the sibling reply "ND? you're on crack", it's already considered fair use to quote other works in context, regardless of copyright licenses, so it's not like the "ND" part can take that away. I just want to grant the additional right to redistribute the work, for any reason, so long as attribution is preserved. I want it to be publicly available.

      --
      proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
    5. Re:Creative commons! by RDW · · Score: 2

      So far as I understand it, British universities could claim copyright on a thesis but typically don't - but they'd certainly be quite pissed off if you published commercially.

      I don't believe this is normally the case, e.g.:

      "I understand that the rights granted to the UCL Institutional Repository through this agreement are entirely non-exclusive and royalty free and that I am free to publish the Work in its present version or future versions elsewhere."

      or:

      "Rights granted to the University of Warwick and the British Library and the user of the thesis through this
      agreement are non-exclusive. I retain all rights in the thesis in its present version or future versions."

      or:

      "Copyright in the thesis usually rests with the author: this does not change when you deposit your thesis in ORA. No ownership is assumed by the Bodleian Libraries over the work."

      Universities are generally more concerned about any material you include (e.g. a figure) in which the copyright is held by a third party (this might even include your own work if you include, say, a paper where you've signed over copyright to a journal). This sort of material can be included under a copyright exemption for the purposes of examination (if properly attributed!), but can't be further distributed by the institutional repository without permission.

  2. You did check with your department first, right? by damn_registrars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because no matter what your intentions are, I would highly advise against jeopardizing the progress of your MS just because you want to use copyright terms that your department doesn't agree with. If you haven't already, I would very highly recommend you check with them first to see how they manage the copyright of theses that are written there. Depending on the institution you may even need to go higher than that to find the official policy and find out if it has any flexibility.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. You don't own it by Dan+B. · · Score: 2

    It doesn't matter what you want to put on your thesis, you university owns the copyrights to it.

    I'd suggest you contact your Uni and put the same question to them, rather than 6 million /. Subscribers.

    --
    Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
    1. Re:You don't own it by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      It doesn't matter what you want to put on your thesis, you university owns the copyrights to it.

      I don't think that's even true for half the universities. I'd be surprised if it was true for 1/3 or 1/4.

      I've seen thesis manuscripts with and without copyright language and none of them has ever been held up or given any trouble from the institution. And I've been on PhD panels for several universities, public and private. Had scores of grad students get their degree without this ever becoming an issue.

      I remember a university head librarian who wanted to make an issue out of this and he was practically laughed out of the meeting. And this at a top-five US school.

      All of this changes with faculty research and other publications, of course. Then it matters, big time.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Don't Use Public Domain by monk · · Score: 2

    You lose all control over the material and some ugly things can happen.

    The Creative Commons licenses give you excellent control and they have a helpful tool on the website to pick the license you want. And attribution is required in the license which will handle your citation requirement.

    There are others including the GNU free documentation license is a bit more specialized, but CC should be plenty for your needs and most importantly has a community of users and attorneys backing it up. You can probably get quite a bit of help if you ever need to defend it.

    --
    [-- Trust the Monkey --]
  5. put not for use on turnitin on the copyright by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3

    put not for use on turnitin on the copyright

    1. Re:put not for use on turnitin on the copyright by Xugumad · · Score: 2

      That way when someone copies large parts of it and submits it as their own work, it's harder to tell?

  6. wha? by nomadic · · Score: 2

    "In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation."

    Uhhh...huh? Theses are academic sources. The university library where the thesis was finished will have a copy. Lack of copyright notice does not mean you can't use the work as long as you don't simply reproduce it and sell it. I really don't understand what is being asked here.

  7. Give yourself extra time, OR do post-hoc by cretog8 · · Score: 2

    At my university, I own the copyright by default, but when I tried to either do it public domain OR creative commons, the office which handles such things flipped out. They weren't angry or anything, they just didn't get it. It came down to doing things the usual way OR being late submitting and so not graduating. So, I have a typical copyright on my thesis.

    However, now that I think about it (and you could do the same thing), since it's my copyright, there's nothing to stop me (or you) from re-publishing with a Creative Commons license after-the-fact. Hmmm....

  8. Say WHAT? by Sooner+Boomer · · Score: 2

    you can't make a derivative work of a thesis anyway

    Derivatives from published, previous work is one of the foundations of educational research. You shouldn't copy the work, or duplicate it whole and call it your own (although I've seen this...), but almost all research, institutional and commercial, was based on previous work. "The reason I can see so far is because I stand on the shoulders of giants". But...if you're saying that you can't take a "chunk" of someone's thesis, call it your own, and publish it as your own work (thesis), I agree; that's plagorism.

    --
    Chaos maximizes locally around me.
    1. Re:Say WHAT? by kylemonger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      With Google around, plagiarists would have to be idiots to try it at this point.

      What I want to do when I read a paper is learn something I can use to make my code better, or to learn that the problem is way harder than I thought and I need to find a workaround. The problem these days is actually being able to read papers without being affiliated with a university, because so many papers are behind publisher paywalls or trapped on internal-only university servers. Someone having to pay what a textbook costs to read a ten year old paper is probably not what the author had in mind when they wrote it.

      Please whatever copyright you use, post the paper online so bright but indigent students can read it.

  9. Copyright vs a license by slew · · Score: 2

    IANAL, but I think you are confused a bit between copyright and your license to use the work and patents for the ideas...

    Your thesis is essentially "automagically" copyrighted the date that you write it (at least in the US). You may gain additional protections by asserting your copyright (via a simple notice asserting copyright), or registering the copyright (with the government). At a minimum, usually people incluse a copyright to clarify ownership. Typically, you own the copyright to your thesis (unless for some reason it can considered a work-for-hire say about some work sponsored by some company like if they paid your tuition or gave you money for research).

    If you do own it, you can do whatever you want to license it. You can publish your terms for a license as to what sort of copyrights you are asserting as part of your document, but it isn't actually required (or necessarily binding either athough it can be used as evidence of an implied license). However, if you don't really own it, asserting ownership and including an implied license might get you in trouble (say if the real owner didn't like your giving any rights away with your included license and the infringer simply said that she relied on your statement, you might be on the hook for some damages).

    Normally, it would be just enough to say that you have a copyright on it and be done with it. People can still reference it via fair-use and the actual ideas in your thesis may or may-not be patentable (since the US is now a first-to-file country, you are probably screwed in case someone wanted to steal yur ideas) copyright simply doesn't matter in these cases. As a general rule, you can't release your work to the public domain "with-a-catch". If it's public-domain, it's public-domain. If you care about someone stealing it out of the public domain, you really have to assert a copyright on it and keep it (or donate the copyright to someone you trust to keep it).

    There is, however, a small technicality that you probably need to have answered first. How would someone stumble upon your thesis? Is it *published* somewhere? or is it just on your own personal website (essentially self-published). If it is published somewhere, the publisher may want to assert some copyright on that (unless is is just a university publication which sometimes doesn't care). For example, if you put a paper in an IEEE journal, the IEEE will want copyright assigned to them (so they can sell the journal) as a condition of publishing your paper. If this is the case, you actually don't have much of a choice in the matter.

  10. Science is based on open information sharing by presidenteloco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (with proper attribution)

    Any restriction on this is a despicable attack on the advancement of science.

    Current journal paywalls ought to be against the law. They ensure that only academia
    at the richest institutions have full access to other scientists' work.

    Academics at poorer institutions, here and around the world, and amateur researchers
    who may be just as intelligent as the established, are shut out. It is an outrageous
    and unjustifiable situation.

    We need a different economic model to pay for the service of editing and coordinating
    peer review. Maybe that cost ought to be covered by a journal submission fee.
    Hardcopy publication is now officially not needed, nor should we be paying hardcopy publishing
    companies just for the right to view the online published information. That's rubbish, and
    it's harmful to the progress of knowledge.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    1. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When you're ready to provide that different model for academic publishing (and pay for the transition and support for its administration), please let us know. Until then you're just another asshole telling people how they ought to act against their own interests, and against the quite valuable prevailing model of academic publication.
       
      "Amateur researchers" include the worst of the cranks and religionists, who rightly face enormous hurdles to publication in respected journals.
       
      And you think a poll tax is the answer? I'm not calling you a socialist or a loon; I'm calling you a moron.

    2. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by pz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a remarkably naive viewpoint. I am responding only because it has been modded (at this point) to +3.

      Journals who require payment for full text or PDF download do not "ensure that only academia and the richest institutions have full access ..." I work at one of the oldest and most famous institutions in the world. Many of the journals where my peers publish are not on the subscription list, and thus I must pay for each access. So, that assertion is not true.

      Each paper costs perhaps $10 to $20. Please show me someone who is smart and motivated enough to be able to contribute to scientific thought and advancement who cannot afford that on occasion. And yes, I pay for those articles out of my own pocket.

      Before the Internet, we had manuscript request cards where, if you saw a paper referenced, you could send a card to the author, and they would mail you back a hardcopy of the manuscript. Up until a few years ago, I would still get one every now and then from somewhere in the far east or Africa. The cost for those is a stamp and a postcard. Please show me someone -- anyone, even one person -- who is sane enough to be able to contribute to science and cannot afford that.

      Even now, most publishers allow authors to post PDFs of their work on the author's private web site. If you can afford internet access, you can get nearly every paper. If you can't get one immediately, you can still send email to the author and request a copy in the email equivalent of the post cards from yesteryear. Please show me anyone -- even one person -- who can afford internet access who cannot get email access and request PDFs, or printed manuscripts, that way.

      Yes, it is not quite as convenient as being able to immediately download manuscripts from the publisher's web sites as soon as they are published. Boo-hoo. I can't afford to live in the best neighborhood, and that impedes my ability to be a professional scientist because I have a longer commute. Is that also despicable? Should I be allowed to live in the best areas for no cost just because I *want* to?

      Modern science, in most but not all fields, is an expensive proposition. The days of amateur scientists making serious contributions in all but a small number of areas are long gone. Saying that we must make all access free (and thus eliminating the valuable filtering service that the journals provide) is a nice pipe-dream but is not rooted in reality. Furthermore, a smart and sufficiently motivated person can make contributions to science -- I had an intern two summers ago who overcame some serious hurdles, including coming from a third-world country, stayed 1-1/2 months in my lab and did enough work to have two publications come out of it -- and not having immediate and free access to all articles is not a limiting factor.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    3. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      (posting from my phone)

      In my field I have published over 2,000 articles over the years - over 100 in peer reviewed journals.

      The model needs to change.

      Most of these research papers are funded by public research dollars.

      Those research dollars paid by publication fees to the publishers (yes, we have to PAY THEM to publish our papers).

      Others do the peer review for FREE (I know I have never been paid to do a peer review - and I have done many)

      The publishing houses get the publication fee (which can be substantial), charge for the journal (again, not the cost of popular science), charge for database access (again, fairly good $$ in this alone), and charge more for individual papers (The best part is that they all claim they are poor doing so!)

      For what, exactly?

      The NIH got it right requiring all NIH funded research to be published in pubmed.

      The public should have access to them.

      It's no longer the 1800's or even the 1900's. Its 2011, and its time to open the flood gates of information.

    4. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What an incredibly stupid viewpoint!

      "Boo-hoo"?! Wow, dude...

      Instant online access to all academic papers would *obviously* accelerate advances in all fields of research. Any expense or inconvenience simply introduces pointless waste in the process.

      Also, having all papers freely available online would allow automated searches and inferences to be made. For example, consider the story of the former Reddit co-owner -- now only 20 year old -- who was arrested for "excessive JSTOR downloads". With access to all of the documents he downloaded, he was able to derive novel and significant facts. That's the kind of research that is hindered by limited access to documents. As "automated scientists" and other bots rival the inference abilities of humans, access to research data will be even more crucial to rapid technological development.

    5. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by smallfries · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not every field operates the same way. Perhaps you only need to access other papers "on occasion". In my field I need to check 50-100 papers during the research that goes into every one that I write. Why is it reasonable for me to be charged $500-2000 by publishers to access research that they did not create? Not all publishers allow private copies of papers to be hosted on a researcher's website. I trust that your field is not dominated by the IEEE and ACM?

      Free access does not imply lack of review. Your point about journals providing filtering is flawed - just look at any of the newer open access journals in CS that do provide filtering by reviewing.

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    6. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, modern science is expensive. But that cost does not come out of the journal publishers' pockets. It is funded by taxpayers and private investors. Furthermore, the editors and reviewers of the journals are scientists in the filed. They don't get any monetary compensation for their work. So journals have a crazy sweet business model: they get copyrights to a product that was completely created without any cost to them and then they get to sell it back to the community who created the product.

      Publishers are an ADDITIONAL and UNNECESSARY cost to doing science. The service they provide nowadays is trivial. You could organize and publish a journal on the internet for a fraction of the price (and people do). We are stuck with payed journals because they have good impact factors (resulting from past publications). Individual scientists need to publish in high impact factor journals to progress in their careers. So it's very hard to break the cycle.

      But make no mistake: this is not capitalism. No value is being generated by the journals (at least not close to how much they charge, by any stretch of the imagination). In the XXI century, conventional payed scientific journals are a bug. And we have to debug the system sooner or later.

    7. Re:Science is based on open information sharing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your reasons are completely understandable, but as a hobby programmer I can't afford a pile of papers every evening when I don't even know if the contents has any practical usage or is relevant for what I need (abstracts are very vague on practical implementations). Looking for papers on Google very often dead-ends on a paywall. If your PDF paper is not directly linked form relevant Wikipedia pages, I'm not even going to waste time looking for it.
      This could very well result in me inventing something very similar to your paper. This only wastes my time, not yours, but don't expect me to acknowledge or even attribute your paper.

  11. post it online; problem solved by bcrowell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me.

    Post a digital copy online. Problem solved. As long as a digital copy is available for free online, others will have access to it, regardless of its copyright status. If you're in a field like physics, you could post it on arxiv.org. If you're in a field that doesn't have anything like arxiv, just post it on your own site, or on a site such as scribd.

    --
    Find free books.
    1. Re:post it online; problem solved by TranceThrust · · Score: 2

      Yep, exactly what parent says. I don't see any problem (what more, I have not encountered problems) with just reserving all rights for yourself (copyright by you, as is (should be) possible with any respectable university), and then distributing it yourself, over the internet. Free and open access, and nobody can legally run off with it or put it on shady websites.

  12. Re:You did check with your department first, right by Dyinobal · · Score: 3

    So basically your shit got stolen by corporate thugs who held your education for ransom?

  13. Best copyright notice by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Funny
    Best copyright notice I know of came from Woody Guthrie:

    “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  14. Really? This is your best effort? by RedLeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Warning: --Flammable Objects ahead!--

    You're polishing your thesis, the crown jewel of a Masters of Science degree, and you can't figure this one out on your own?

    Worse, you ask HERE!?!

    Hint: Perhaps you should harness some of the experience in researching that you've piled into the past 5-7 years of academia, along with INSIDER ACCESS to academia to get an answer and recommendation worthy of consideration. Does your university have a law school? Go find a member of the legal faculty with some modern clue in the field of intellectual property.

    On the other hand, you could rely on the 2^n monkeys on the Internet banging random crapola into keyboards to eventually come up with the "right answer".

    Oh, wait......

    ( Sheesh.... )

    Red

  15. Re:You did check with your department first, right by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 2

    my Thesis department basically said "this is a work for hire, we own the rights to it, you can share it personally for academic pursuits" or something along those lines.

    That's such bullshit. If the institution paid you to write a thesis, then it would be a work for hire, but actually YOU pay the INSTITUTION to LET you write a thesis for them. How the hell can they claim copyright over it?

  16. ND ? you're on crack. by oneiros27 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Please do not *ever* recommend ND for anything of this nature again.

    Think about it -- research builds upon other research. That's the whole point of publishing research.

    We *want* people to build on the work. ND *specifically* tells people 'you're not allowed to do *anything* with my research'. SA's another messy one, as it sets a restriction on derivatives.

    The best thing authors should do is to make sure that they don't lose their rights to the document, so that they can re-distribute the paper, no matter what stupidity the journal publishers do. And for that, see Creative Common's Scholar's Copyright Project:
            http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  17. Re:ND ? you're on crack. by Repossessed · · Score: 2

    'derivative' would include something like grabbing a copy of a chart or a table of figures published in the first paper. I don't write papers, so I'm not sure how much of a pain in the ass it would be to remake them (though I imagine a lot, since raw data usually isn't included), but I see this tactic uses very very frequently in secondary papers.

    --
    Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
  18. Re:You did check with your department first, right by RyoShin · · Score: 2

    Because my work place did pay me to write the thesis. Again, it was a joint-venture of sorts; that's mainly where the whole copyright thing comes in.