proquest dissertations copyright

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global

• Writing & Research

Copyright Holders

If i choose to upload to proquest dissertations and theses global, who holds the copyright to my dissertation or thesis.

ProQuest states,

"As the author, you retain sole and complete ownership over your dissertation or thesis ( ProQuest, 2018 )."

ProQuest has created a document to help readers understand copyright law and doctoral dissertations. Check out the document below for any in-depth questions or concerns you might have about uploading your content onto PQD&T.

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• Last Updated: Mar 15, 2023 4:21 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sph.uth.tmc.edu/PQDTG

Thesis & Dissertation Publishing: ProQuest Copyright Options

• Getting Started
• Publish /Upload with ProQuest
• ProQuest Copyright Options
• Graduate Research (Research Guide) This link opens in a new window

ProQuest ETD Publishing Options

Publishing your graduate thesis or dissertation electronically through ProQuest ETD is a requirement of the University of Wyoming. You will need to select either traditional publishing or open access publishing during the submission process. Review the materials explaining these copyright choices prior to submitting your thesis or dissertation. You may want to discuss the options with your major professor as well.

• Open Access Compared to Traditional Publishing Definitions and choice considerations for publishing options (from ProQuest)

ProQuest EDT - Traditional Copyright Option

The traditional publishing option indexes your work in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (and associated) databases at no cost to you. Many academic libraries worldwide subscribe to this resource, making full text (PDF) content readily accessible to authorized users (i.e., students, faculty, and staff) at their institutions. ProQuest will sell individual copies of a thesis or dissertation upon request. You may also choose to make purchase of your thesis or dissertation available via third parties. If your thesis or dissertation is sold, you will receive royalties as long as you maintain a current address with ProQuest.

The citation record for your thesis or dissertation is findable in search engines for Google Scholar and google.com unless you opt out; however, your full text PDF will not accessible on these websites when choosing the traditional publishing option.

ProQuest EDT - Open Access Copyright Option

Open access publishing is an option that provides more access to your research work than with traditional publishing. Researchers and scholars around the world have access to your work without having to pay for access through a publishing company. This option involves an additional fee from the author (i.e., graduate student submitter).

To publish your thesis or dissertation as open access, select the "Open Access Publishing Plus" option when setting up your ProQuest ETD account. Follow the prompts and pay the additional fee. You will not receive any royalties with this option.

The citation record for your thesis or dissertation is findable in search engines for Google Scholar and google.com unless you opt out. When you choose the ProQuest open access publishing option, your full text PDF will also be freely accessible on these websites.

• ProQuest Open Access Service Overview of Open Access option for theses and dissertations on ProQuest.

Delayed Release - Embargoes

When submitting your thesis or dissertation to ProQuest ETD, you can specify whether you want it to be released immediately upon publication or for it to be delayed for a set period of time (i.e., 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years). Delayed release of a publication is called an embargo. You may want to specify an embargo period to protect your creative content while preparing a journal article, or pursuing publication by an academic press or commercial press, or to retain patenting rights, or for ethical non-disclosure reasons.

• Embargoes & Restrictions Guide (ProQuest ETD)

Articles Regarding Open Access and Embargo Choices

• Open Access and the Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual Chapter in the book "Open Access and the Future of Scholarly Communication: Implementation"
• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers Article in "College & Research Libraries"
• Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Sciences? Article in "College & Research Libraries"

Copyright for Dissertations & Theses

• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis (ProQuest manual) Understand copyright issues "by clarifying your ownership of the dissertation, registering the copyright, and deciding whether a Creative Commons license is appropriate." Provided by the publisher of the ProQuest Theses & Dissertations Global database.

Registering Copyright

Your creative and original research work is copyrighted automatically. Registering your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office is optional, and costs extra. Copyright registration allows you to sue for statutory and actual damages as well as for attorneys' fees if someone steals your work and claims it as their own. Without registration, your copyright still entitles you to sue for actual damages (only) for copyright infringement.

• U.S. Copyright Office

ProQuest ETD Submission

You may create your ProQuest ETD account before you are ready to publish. Be sure to remember your log-on information for when you return to the website to upload your final document.

• ProQuest ETD Submission - website for UW
• How to submit to ProQuest ETD (ProQuest LibGuide) To access a training video, click the links for "Recorded Webinars" then "ETD Administrator - Electronic Submissions: Product Education" then "ETD Administrator -- Student Submission Webinar."

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• Last Updated: Apr 16, 2024 12:08 PM
• URL: https://uwyo.libguides.com/dissertation-publishing

Dissertations, Doctoral Projects, and Theses: Copyright

Who owns copyright in my dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis after it is published in digitalgeorgetown and proquest.

You own the copyright in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis from the moment it is fixed in a tangible form, such as saved as a digital file. Nothing in the submission process to ProQuest or DigitalGeorgetown changes the ownership status of your work. As the copyright owner, you have the exclusive right to copy and distribute your work. When you submit your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis, you will grant limited rights to Georgetown University and ProQuest so they can make your work available online.

DigitalGeorgetown

When you sign the Electronic Thesis, Doctoral Project & Dissertation (ETD) Release , you grant a non-exclusive license to Georgetown University to make your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis available online in the University's Institutional Repository, DigitalGeorgetown .

As part of the submission process through the  ProQuest ETD Administrator , you will grant ProQuest a non-exclusive license to make your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis available online in its subscription databases. For a fee, you may choose to make your work available open access on proquest.com .

Do I need to register my copyright?

Registering your copyright with the Copyright Office is not required for your work to be protected by copyright, but it is required if you ever need to enforce your rights through litigation. If you are considering registering your copyright, read more on our Copyright Registration page.

What do I do if I have used materials created by others (text, images, data, charts, etc.) in my work?

While there are unlikely to be any copyright concerns when third-party materials are shared only with your committee, after you submit your work to the Graduate School and it becomes available in DigitalGeorgetown to anyone with internet access, you must consider whether you are infringing any copyrights by making third-party works freely available. Both the DigitalGeorgetown release form and the ProQuest submission form require you to certify that you have obtained any necessary permissions for materials in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis.

If the materials you are using are in the public domain, have a Creative Commons license, or are fair uses, you may use them without permission from the copyright owner. In addition to the pages linked below, you may find our Copyright Videos useful to better understand your rights and responsibilities when using third-party materials in your work.

Public Domain

Materials in the public domain are not protected by copyright law, and therefore may be used freely. “Public domain” has a defined meaning under copyright law and does not mean materials publicly available on the internet. While there are several ways that a work may enter the public domain, the most likely is that copyright protection has expired. For 2022, anything published before 1927 can be used freely. Read more about the public domain on our Public Domain page.

Creative Commons

Some materials have a Creative Commons or other open license that allows materials to be reused with few or no restrictions. For materials found online, check the website’s terms and conditions to see whether the work may be used for noncommercial educational purposes.

Fair use permits the use of limited portions of a third-party work in a new work without permission or license fees. Absent unusual circumstances, properly cited direct quotations in your work will qualify as a fair use. For the use of other works, you will need to analyze the four fair use factors to determine whether your use is fair. Fair use determinations are subjective, fact-specific, and not completely risk-free since users and rights holders may disagree on whether a potential use is fair. To learn more about fair use, visit our Fair Use page.

If there are any materials in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis that are not public domain, Creative Commons, or fair use, you may be able to request permission to use them in your work. To learn more, visit our Requesting Permission page. Another option is to remove the copyrighted material from your work before submitting it through the ProQuest submission portal. You should note where any material in your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis was redacted and describe what information has been removed.

Where can I get more information about copyright and my dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis?

• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis (2014) - overview from ProQuest
• Copyright and Your Dissertation or Thesis: Ownership, Fair Use, and Your Rights and Responsibilities (2013) - detailed manual by Kenneth Crews
• If you have questions about copyright and your dissertation, doctoral project, or thesis, contact [email protected] .
• For questions about DigitalGeorgetown, contact [email protected] .

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="proquest dissertations copyright"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Fair use, copyright, patent, and publishing options.

• Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?
• Embargo of online copies
• Creative Commons license
• Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?
• Register for copyright?
• Supplementary materials
• Make your work discoverable on search engines?
• Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

1. Is information that you plan to include from others considered “fair use” and are you acknowledging these sources correctly?

You are responsible for acknowledging any facts, ideas, or materials of others that you include in your work. You must follow the guidelines for acknowledging the work of others in the “Code of Academic Integrity and Acknowledging the Work of Others” (published in the Policy Notebook for the Cornell Community ) .

If you use any copyrighted material in the dissertation or thesis, it is your responsibility to give full credit to the author and publisher of work quoted. The acknowledgment should be placed in a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the paper or chapter. Additionally, you must determine whether use of the material can be classified as a “fair use” by performing an analysis of your use of each copyrighted item. The Cornell Copyright Information Center’s Fair Use Checklist ) is a helpful tool for performing this analysis. (See also, Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities , published by ProQuest, or The Chicago Manual of Style , published by the University of Chicago Press.)

If your use of material is not considered a “fair use,” you must obtain written permission from the copyright owner. Two copies of each permission letter must be submitted with the dissertation or thesis. ProQuest has specific requirements for the content of the permission letter. For these guidelines, consult the ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Agreement form (published by ProQuest).

If you have already published or had accepted for publication part of your own dissertation or thesis material in a journal, depending on the terms of your publication agreement, it may be necessary to write to that journal and obtain written authorization to use the material in your dissertation.

2. Embargo of online copies

The value of your dissertation extends well beyond your graduation requirements. It’s important that you make an informed decision about providing online access, via ProQuest and eCommons, to your work. This decision can expand the visibility and impact of your work, but it can also shape the options available to you for publishing subsequent works based on your dissertation.

ProQuest’s ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database indexes almost all dissertations published in the U.S. and provides subscription access online to the full text of more recent dissertations. ProQuest also sells print copies of dissertations, paying royalties to authors, when they exceed a minimum threshold. Authors retain copyright in the works they submit to ProQuest.

eCommons is a service of the Cornell University Library that provides long-term, online access to Cornell-related content of enduring value. Electronic theses and dissertations deposited in eCommons, unless subject to embargo, are freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. When submitting to eCommons, you retain copyright in your work. Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses submitted to ProQuest are automatically submitted to eCommons, subject to the same embargo you select for ProQuest.

Electronic copies of dissertations in PQDT or eCommons may be made accessible immediately upon submission or after an embargo period of six months, one year, or two years. You may wish to consider an embargo period which helps address publishers’ interests in being the first to publish scholarly books or articles, while also ensuring that scholarship is accessible to the general public within a reasonable period of time. Your decision should be made in consultation with your special committee.

3. Creative Commons license

Creative Commons licenses provide authors with a straightforward and standardized means of prospectively granting certain permissions to potential users of the author’s material. Authors may request proper attribution, permit copying and the creation of derivative works, request that others share derivative works under the same terms, and allow or disallow commercial uses. Authors may even choose to place their works directly into the public domain. You will have the option of selecting a Creative Commons license when you upload your dissertation or thesis to ProQuest, and your choice will automatically be applied to the copy of your work in eCommons.

4. Has a patent application been filed (or will one be) on the basis of your thesis or dissertation research?

Cornell University Policy 1.5 governs inventions and related property rights. Inventions made by faculty, staff, and students must be disclosed to the Center for Technology Licensing at Cornell University (CTL). Theses and dissertations describing patentable research should be withheld from publication, in order to avoid premature public disclosure.

Use the delayed release (embargo) option if a patent application is or will be in process, noting the reason for the delay as “patent pending.” If you have any questions, please contact Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing at 607-254-4698 or [email protected] .

5. Register for copyright?

Copyright law involves many complex issues that are relevant to you as a graduate student, both in protecting your own work and in referencing the work of others. Discussion of copyright in this publication is not meant to substitute for the legal advice of qualified attorneys. A more detailed discussion of copyright law can be found in the publication from ProQuest entitled Copyright Law and the Doctoral Dissertation: Guidelines to Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities by Kenneth D. Crews.

Copyright protection automatically exists from the time the work is created in fixed form and the copyright immediately becomes the property of the author. Registration with the United States Copyright Office is not required to secure copyright; rather it is a legal formality to place on public record the basic facts of a particular copyright. Although not a condition of copyright protection itself, registering the copyright is ordinarily necessary before any infringement suits can be filed in court.

To register a copyright for your dissertation or thesis, register online or download printable forms . You may also request forms by mail from the Information Section, U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559, or contact them by telephone at 202-707-3000.

Doctoral candidates: You may authorize ProQuest to file, on your behalf, an application for copyright registration. This option will be presented to you as part of the submission process.

6. Supplementary materials

If supplementary materials (audio, video, datasets, etc., up to 2GB per file) are part of your thesis or dissertation, you may submit them as supplementary files during the online submission process. For help selecting long-lived file formats, note ProQuest’s guidance in their document, “Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (Including Supplemental Files).” File formats for which ProQuest does not guarantee migration may still have a high likelihood of preservation in Cornell’s digital repository; please see the eCommons help page for further guidance.

Do not embed media files in the PDF version of your thesis or dissertation, as this can significantly increase the size of the file and make it difficult to download and access. Include a description of each supplementary file in the abstract of your thesis or dissertation. You may include an additional supplementary file containing more detailed information about the supplementary materials as a “readme” file or other form of documentation; this is particularly advisable for data sets or code. The Research Data Management Service Group ( [email protected] ) offers assistance in preparing and documenting data sets for online distribution.

7. Make your work discoverable on search engines?

ProQuest offers authors the option of making their graduate work discoverable through major search engines including Yahoo, Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. If you chose the Search Engine option on their dissertation “paper” publishing agreement or within ProQuest’s PROQUEST ETD Administrator (electronic submission service), you can expect to have your work appear in the major search engines.

If you change your mind and do not want your work to be made available through search engines, you can contact customer service at [email protected] or 800-521-0600 ext. 77020. In addition, if you did not initially adopt this option but now want your works made available through this service, contact the customer service group to change your selection.

Please note that search engines index content in eCommons, regardless of the choice you make for ProQuest.

8. Make your work accessible to people with visual disabilities

When creating a PDF version of your thesis or dissertation it is important to keep in mind that readers may use assistive technology such as screen readers to access your document.  Follow best practices to ensure that your thesis or dissertation is accessible to everyone.  These resources may be helpful:

• Cornell CIT’s guidance for creating accessible PDFs
• Checking accessibility using Acrobat Pro
• Embedding alternative text for images in Word
• Save a Word doc as an accessible PDF

Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission

• Article Number: 000095563

Preparing Your Manuscript for Submission (Including Supplemental Files) Submit as a PDF

• Embed all fonts (further information is provided below related to embedding fonts)
• Make sure there is no password protection on the PDF
• Ensure that security settings allow printing
• Format as individual, single pages

Verify Proper Formatting

Manuscript specifications, supplementary materials.

• Do not embed media files in your PDF.
• Upload media files as supplementary files. During online submission, you will be asked to upload any supplementary files.
• Describe files in your abstract. Add a description of each supplementary file in your abstract.

Supporting Documentation for Supplementary Materials

• Reprint Permission Letters: If you are going to include multimedia material covered under someone else's copyright—an audio or video clip, a digital photograph, etc.—you must provide us with written permission to include it.
• Third Party Software Licenses (if needed): If you are including third party software with your submission, you must provide written permission to distribute it. Note that this is different than including a file generated by a particular program. For example, including a Microsoft Excel file (.xls) does not require including the software license.

Embedding Fonts

• *Arial 10pt
• Century 11pt
• *Courier New 10pt
• Garamond 12pt
• *Georgia 11pt
• Lucida Bright 10pt
• Microsoft Sans Serif 10pt
• Tahoma 10pt
• *Times New Roman 12pt
• *Trebuchet MS 10pt
• *Verdana 10pt
• On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Save tab.
• Select the Embed TrueType fonts check box.
• Save the document.
• Open your document in Microsoft Word
• Click on the Acrobat tab at the top. Select preference.
• Click on Advanced Settings.
• Click on the Fonts folder on the left side of the new window. In the lower box on the right, delete any fonts that appear in the "Never Embed" box. Then click "OK."
• If prompted to save these new settings, save them as "Embed all fonts."
• Now the Change Conversion Settings window should show "embed all fonts" in the Conversion Settings drop down list and it should be selected. Click "OK" again.
• Click on the Adobe PDF link at the top again. This time select Convert to Adobe PDF. Depending on the size of your document and the speed of your computer, this process can take 1-15 minutes.
• After your document is converted, select the "File" tab at the top of the page. Then select "Document Properties."
• Click on the "Fonts" tab. Carefully check all fonts. They should all show "(Embedded Subset)" after the font name.
• If you see "(Embedded Subset)" after all fonts, you have successfully embedded all fonts.

https://support.proquest.com/s/article/Preparing-Your-Manuscript-for-Submission?language=en_US

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ProQuest™ Dissertations & Theses Citation Index

The ProQuest™ Dissertations & Theses Citation Index (PQDT) is the world's most comprehensive curated collection of multi-disciplinary dissertations and theses, offering over 5.5 million records representing dissertations and theses from thousands of universities around the world.

Extending from they early 1600s to present, PQDT coverage is broadly multidisciplinary and includes foundational research in the life sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, social sciences, and humanities. Within dissertations and theses is a wealth of scholarship, yet it is often overlooked because most go unpublished.

Key Features

The ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index will be a standalone database and included in an All Databases search by default. WoS users also have filter options available in each search so that they can search broadly and then narrow focus on a particular collection, subject category, document type, etc. If a user wants to locate dissertations or theses specifically, they can also search of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Citation Index only.

Standalone and aggregated search

PQDT is included in ALL Database search and can also be searched as a unique collection.

Track citation activity in Web of Science Core Collection

Dissertations and theses that have been cited by Web of Science Core Collection records will include a citation count and a link to the citing articles.

Claim dissertation or theses to a Web of Science Researcher Profiles

Researchers can manually claim their dissertation or thesis to their Web of Science Researcher Profile and make it part of the public view of their profile.

Links to Full Text of dissertations and theses on ProQuest platform

Institutions that subscribe to PQDT Global on the ProQuest platform will be able to link directly to their entitled full text.

Note: ProQuest Dissertation and Theses Citation Index will be released to customers in two phases. Phase 1: In July 2023, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Citation Index will go live with metadata records for 5.5+ million dissertations and theses. The records will not include cited reference indexing, which means that functionality such as Related Records and Cited References lists and associated navigation will not display. Phase 2: In late 2023, Linked Cited References lists and Related Records will be released to fully connect dissertations to the Web of Science citation network. If you have any questions regarding PQDT entitlement or functionality, please contact the Web of Science support team .

Copyright on Campus: Theses & Dissertations

• Introduction
• Copyright Law Basics
• Public Domain
• Theses & Dissertations
• Author Rights
• Showing Movies in Class and on Campus
• Copyright & Data Management
• Copyright in Special Collections
• Open Education

Publisher Policies

Students often receive mixed messages when it comes to including a published paper in a dissertation, or publishing from the dissertation beyond graduation. Both of these scenarios are common and familiar to publishers, but there might be specific guidelines or requirements such as:

• Be transparent. Include a brief explanation when you submit your publication. More often, journals use plagiarism detection software; letting them know your work is out there and publicly available will help sidestep any questions.
• Include a citation to the published work in your thesis or dissertation, and/or a citation to the thesis/dissertation in the resulting publication.
• Specific rules for formatting.
• Resource: Publisher Policies MIT Libraries has compiled a list of major publishers with links to relevant policies

Reusing Material

Theses and dissertations often use charts, graphs, images, and quotes from other journal articles, books, or websites. When doing this, be aware that most content is protected by copyright, though it's likely fine for you to use these materials if you can do one of the following:

• Use public domain content. If you are including factual data presented in a straightforward way (e.g., a simple bar graph or pie chart showing the results of an experiment), it's very likely the figure does not meet the minimum threshold for creatively and is not protected by copyright.
• Use openly licensed content. Open access journal articles and books, as well as other media labeled with a Creative Commons license, 
• Decide your use is "fair." Fair use is a specific provision within U.S. Copyright Law that allows for limited use of in-copyright material without seeking permission. In general, quotations from the work of others should be no longer than is necessary to support the scholarly point you wish to make. In the case of images, you should be sure that the pictures you reproduce are closely tied to your research goals and are each made the subject of specific scholarly comment. More on fair use .
• If you're not sure about relying on fair use, you can often seek permission. Most of the time, this means navigating to the publisher's website or a journal article page and finding a link to "rights" or "permissions." Many publishers allow graduate students to use content without charge, with the understanding that if you publish your work formally in future, you may need to obtain permission again and pay a fee. It's a good idea to get permission in writing, but even an email is sufficient.

From Dissertation to Publication - FAQ on Your Rights as Author

Who owns the copyright of a thesis or dissertation?

You do! The copyright of a thesis or dissertation belongs to you as the author. Under the U.S. Copyright Act, works are automatically copyrighted at the moment they are fixed in a tangible form, including residing on your computer's hard drive. You continue to own that copyright until you transfer it to another party.  A transfer of copyright must be in writing.  If parts of a work have already been published and copyright in those other works was transferred to someone else (e.g. a publisher), copyright of those parts remains with whom it was transferred to.

Who owns copyright in work produced as part of a team or in a lab?

Whenever a group undertakes a project or research, it is best to have a discussion up front, including the faculty advisor or chair, to clarify how copyright, patents and other intellectual property will be managed and who will retain and manage rights for all portions of the project. Be sure to consider not only publications arising from the project, but also data sets, software, websites, user interfaces, specifications, and any other outputs. It is always best to make sure that faculty make clear to graduate students and others working for them how research outputs will be owned or used in order to avoid confusion. In circumstances where grant funds or University funding is significantly invested in the project or research, other ownership interests may be at play, which should be discussed and understood.

Do I need to register my copyright?

You do not need to register with the Copyright Office in order to enjoy copyright protection. Such protection is automatic, coming into effect at the moment a work is fixed in a tangible form. However, registration has certain advantages.  First, if your work is registered you have strong evidence that you are the author of the work and the owner of its copyright. Also, registration is necessary to enforce a copyright against an infringer or plagiarist. For full detail, read the U.S. Copyright Office circular " Copyright Basics ". The benefits of registration are outlined on Page 7.

Registration can be completed online directly (for a fee of $45) through the Copyright Office website  or through ProQuest (for a fee of $55) who will register the copyright for you and in your name.

Can I use previously published articles of my own in my work?

It depends. You will need to review the agreement you signed with the publisher of our previously published article. Most agreements require you to transfer your copyright to the publisher. If this is the case, you must request permission from the publisher to "reprint" the article as a chapter in your dissertation. However, some agreements specify that you retain the right to reprint the article in your dissertation. The chart below details several publishers' policies with respect to reusing your own previously published work in a thesis or dissertation; however, you should always review the terms of any agreement you signed.

Why do I have two publishing agreements to review and sign, and what do I need to understand about them?

University of Florida dissertations are distributed by both ProQuest/UMI and the UF Libraries. Both will make your work available and preserve it for the future (ProQuest through its Dissertations and Theses database and print sales if you choose to allow that, and the UF Libraries through its institutional repository, the IR@UF ). In return for those services, both ProQuest and the UF Libraries require you to certify that the work is your own and that you are not infringing the rights of others. These agreements also provide a mechanism for all parties to recognize your rights as an author.  

Please note, by signing these agreements you still retain copyright, including the right to publish your work; the licenses you give to ProQuest/UMI and to the UF Libraries does not preclude publishing any part of your dissertation in another form or prevent you from transferring your copyright to some other party at a later date. A license is a permission you give to others to use your work in ways that would otherwise not be permitted by copyright law; they are not a transfer of your copyright.

The agreement with UF Libraries requires that you give a license to UF to put your dissertation in the IR@UF and distribute it in a way that allows other scholars to read it and use it for non-commercial purposes, as long as they do not make changes to your work and always give you credit. This license is designed to enable scholarship and to protect you from plagiarism. The agreement with ProQuest/UMI  grants ProQuest the non-exclusive right to reproduce and disseminate your work according to the conditions you elect in the agreement, including whether to make your work available after a specified embargo period and whether to make it available open access. 

Both publishing agreements allow students to elect to make their dissertations available immediately or after a specific limited period of time known as an embargo. An embargo may be appropriate and desired when a student wants to allow time to explore publishing part of it in other forms, if the dissertation contains material for which a patent might be sought, or if it includes other sensitive or confidential information.

What is open access, and how does it apply to my thesis or dissertation?

Articles, books, theses and dissertations are said to be "open access" when they are "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." By making publications open access, the widest sharing of ideas and research results is made possible, which is generally done either by publishing in open access journals or depositing them in open access repositories such as PubMed Central, arXiv, or the IR@UF. University of Florida policy is for all new dissertations to be available open access through the IR@UF, either immediately or after an embargo period. 

Will journal or book publishers consider publishing my work if it is based on an open access thesis or dissertation?

Recent surveys  show that a majority of journal editors and university presses would accept submissions of articles and book manuscripts that were based upon theses or dissertations, even if they are available in an open access repository. This is in part because most publishers consider theses and dissertations to be "student work" that will require substantial editing and revision before being published in article or book form. The chart below summarizes the policies of some publishers regarding the publication of new works from a thesis or dissertation.

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• Last Updated: Jan 30, 2024 4:37 PM
• URL: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/copyright

Theses & Dissertations

• Submitting your Thesis or Dissertation
• Depositing with ProQuest
• Understanding Copyright
• Understanding Embargoes
• Frequently Asked Questions

Helpful Links

• Copyright Issues Related to the Publication of Dissertations

Copyright is an important component to publishing your dissertation or thesis. Students should consider copyright as early in their work as possible, especially if you wish to reuse content from another copyright holder, such as images or figures. Here are some details on things that students should consider when reviewing their copyright needs and uses.

For additional information and resources on copyright, please visit the Copyright Guide . 

Determining Copyright Ownership

Under Carnegie Mellon University’s  Intellectual Property Policy , you most likely own the copyright to your dissertation. However, if the research was sponsored by the university or conducted under an agreement between an external sponsor and the university, check the agreement to see who owns the intellectual property. When in doubt, consult Carnegie Mellon’s  Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation  (CTTEC),  412-268-7393  or  [email protected] .

Neither the University Libraries nor ProQuest/UMI require copyright transfer to publish your dissertation. Both require only the non-exclusive right to reproduce and distribute your work.

Copyright Permissions

According to the  Fair Use Policy of Carnegie Mellon University , all members of the University community must comply with U.S. Copyright Law. When a proposed use of copyrighted material does not fall within the fair use doctrine and is not otherwise permitted by license or exception, written permission from the copyright owner is required to engage in the use.

To avoid publication delays, Carnegie Mellon’s Office of the General Counsel encourages graduate students to get permission from copyright holders as early in the dissertation process as possible. This includes permission to use your own previously published work if you transferred your copyright to the publisher. See  Copyright Issues Related to the Publication of Dissertations  for more information.

If you choose to publish your dissertation with ProQuest/UMI, you must sign an agreement indicating that you have the necessary copyright permissions, and provide UMI with copies of the permission letters. If you choose to publish with Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, you need not provide copies of the permission letters. The assumption is that you have complied with university policy.

Registering Your Copyright

The  Copyright Law of the United States  gives the copyright owner the exclusive right to copy and distribute the work, perform and display it publicly, and create derivative works. Copyright owners do not need to register their work with the U.S. Copyright Office to acquire these rights. However, if you own the copyright to your dissertation and you have a compelling need to acquire additional legal rights, such as the right to file a copyright infringement lawsuit, then you should register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.

You can register your copyright using the U.S. Copyright Office’s  eCO Online System  for a fee of $35. Alternatively, if you choose to publish your work with ProQuest/UMI, UMI will register your copyright for you for a fee of $55. (See page 6 of the  ProQuest Publishing Agreement .)

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• Last Updated: Mar 19, 2024 11:21 AM
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Victor Mukhin

• Scientific Program

Title : Active carbons as nanoporous materials for solving of environmental problems

However, up to now, the main carriers of catalytic additives have been mineral sorbents: silica gels, alumogels. This is obviously due to the fact that they consist of pure homogeneous components SiO2 and Al2O3, respectively. It is generally known that impurities, especially the ash elements, are catalytic poisons that reduce the effectiveness of the catalyst. Therefore, carbon sorbents with 5-15% by weight of ash elements in their composition are not used in the above mentioned technologies. However, in such an important field as a gas-mask technique, carbon sorbents (active carbons) are carriers of catalytic additives, providing effective protection of a person against any types of potent poisonous substances (PPS). In ESPE “JSC "Neorganika" there has been developed the technology of unique ashless spherical carbon carrier-catalysts by the method of liquid forming of furfural copolymers with subsequent gas-vapor activation, brand PAC. Active carbons PAC have 100% qualitative characteristics of the three main properties of carbon sorbents: strength - 100%, the proportion of sorbing pores in the pore space – 100%, purity - 100% (ash content is close to zero). A particularly outstanding feature of active PAC carbons is their uniquely high mechanical compressive strength of 740 ± 40 MPa, which is 3-7 times larger than that of  such materials as granite, quartzite, electric coal, and is comparable to the value for cast iron - 400-1000 MPa. This allows the PAC to operate under severe conditions in moving and fluidized beds.  Obviously, it is time to actively develop catalysts based on PAC sorbents for oil refining, petrochemicals, gas processing and various technologies of organic synthesis.

Victor M. Mukhin was born in 1946 in the town of Orsk, Russia. In 1970 he graduated the Technological Institute in Leningrad. Victor M. Mukhin was directed to work to the scientific-industrial organization "Neorganika" (Elektrostal, Moscow region) where he is working during 47 years, at present as the head of the laboratory of carbon sorbents.     Victor M. Mukhin defended a Ph. D. thesis and a doctoral thesis at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (in 1979 and 1997 accordingly). Professor of Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Scientific interests: production, investigation and application of active carbons, technological and ecological carbon-adsorptive processes, environmental protection, production of ecologically clean food.   

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