Here’s what you need to know about licence options and  submitting your final thesis to the Discovery Research Portal.

At the conclusion of your post-graduate research degree, you’ll be required to upload a copy of your thesis to the Discovery Research Portal. The version uploaded should be the final version, as approved by the examining committee. Beforehand you’ll need to complete a Thesis Deposit Agreement (TDA) that contains vital details required to ensure that your research is archived appropriately, with the correct re-use permissions and, if required, the appropriate restrictions in place to protect your, and the University’s intellectual property rights.

Creative Commons Licences and Copyright.

In order to ensure that your intellectual property rights are appropriately displayed and recorded on Discovery, you should, in consultation with your supervisor, complete the section on the TDA indicating which type of licence you’d like to apply. Carefully consider how you wish your work to be accessed and potentially re-used in the future.

One of two options should be selected:

Copyright of the Author. All Rights Reserved. Selecting this option asserts your right as the author to restrict re-use. It means that you must be contacted by the person(s) wishing to re-use the work, as described by UK Copyright Law. For more information https://www.gov.uk/using-somebody-elses-intellectual-property/copyright.

Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND. Creative Commons licenses can be assigned to a copyrighted work and confirms certain re-use permissions, without the need for the author to be contacted. The Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND consists of three components:

CC-BY = this means that anyone re-using the work must attribute it to the original author.

NC = Non-Commercial. This means that the work cannot be used for commercial purposes.

ND = No-Derivatives. This means that the work cannot be changed, adapted or modified in any way.

Once assigned, a Creative Commons Licence cannot be revoked.

So, to sum up. If you want to be contacted directly by someone wishing to re-use the content of the thesis, you should select the first option. If you want your work to be more easily re-used, without the need to be contacted, whilst also asserting ownership and the need for attribution, you should select the second option.

We strongly recommend assigning one of these licences to protect your work from plagiarism and to make sure that any future use correctly attributes you as the author. It’s better to leave no doubt that the work is yours than to find out that someone else has claimed it as their own!