Australian copyright law allows you as a researcher to copy and use limited amounts of other people’s material (third party material protected by copyright) in your research without their permission and free of charge.
What can you copy?
Teaching materials and resources provided to you at UTS are protected by copyright. Whilst you are permitted to access and use those materials and resources for your own educational purposes, you are not permitted to re-use them without permission of the copyright owner. You are not permitted to:
- sell them
- give them to someone else
- publish them in any way other than permitted by the copyright owner.
Improper or illegal use of teaching materials may lead to prosecution for copyright infringement.
Resources
- Fact Sheet: Copyright - What can you copy?
- Manage Your Content outlines the requirements for using different sorts of content and teaching material.
Reference and acknowledge the copied work
When you have copied, reproduced, or used other people’s material in your work, you need to correctly acknowledge the author and reference their material.
The APA (American Psychological Association) referencing style is the most common style in use at UTS. Other styles in use are AGLC (Australian Guide to Legal Citation).
Seeking permission to use copyright material
If you want to copy more than you are permitted as a student or researcher, you will need to seek permission from the copyright owner.
See Seeking Permission in the Copyright toolbox of Manage Your Content for details.
Publishing your work
When you are ready to publish or promote your UTS work, including your research or thesis, outside of UTS, you will need to reconsider any copyright material contained in that work.
In some cases, you may need to seek permission from the owner of that copyright material. Most publishers will expect you to have arranged permission or to have used a legal amount of copyright content in your work.
The GRS thesis preparation and submission procedures (section 18) also requires that you have permission to use any copyright material contained in your thesis. Using the UTS Library Thesis Copyright Log will help you track and manage copyright content used in your thesis.
You will need to indicate the status of any copyright material contained in your thesis when you submit your digital thesis to the UTS OPUS repository - see the Copyright Guidelines for UTS Digital Thesis submission.
Resources
- Publishing Services provides guidance on services and considerations in publishing your work.
- Fact Sheet: Copyright considerations when publishing your student work
- UTS Library Thesis Copyright Log to help track and manage third party copyright content in your work.
- Manage Your Content outlines the requirements for creating and publishing different sorts of content, including your research.
Retaining rights over my intellectual property
Institutions around the world are now rapidly developing ways to showcase the scholarly output of their researchers, through tools like UTS ePRESS. Almost all publishers accept the need to accommodate this change. Don't be afraid to negotiate with publishers up front to retain rights over your intellectual property - they will be dealing with this on a regular basis.
Manage Your Content provides advice on using and creating content for publication, teaching or research. As well as covering options to protect, negotiate and retain your key rights. See the Copyright Toolbox for more details.
UTS’ ownership of your work
In most cases UTS students and researchers retain ownership of their work created at UTS. However, some exceptions and conditions apply, for example, in certain cases UTS will keep a copy of your work. The UTS Intellectual Property Policy specifies the conditions for which UTS will retain ownership over the work produced by UTS students and researchers.
Get Help
Contact the Library for copyright assistance.
