Electronic submission of your thesis is required of PhD students, for all submissions from the academic year 2008/09 onwards. This submission should be through the Graduate School, as with your print versions. This page introduces issues relating to the electronic availability of your thesis, but more information about electronic thesis submission is available at the Graduate School FAQs page. Information about the submission of the hard copy or paper version of your thesis please see the Graduate School's Guide to Examinations for Higher Degrees by Research for more information.

You need to be sure that you understand these guidelines in order to help you to decide what should happen to your thesis in the WRAP repository.

An introduction to WRAP

The University of Warwick has established a repository to house electronic copies of journal articles and theses written by its staff and research students. This repository will become a record of what has been written and will preserve digital copies of that written work, whilst also making it available on the web to researchers and others.

Access to your thesis

Students must submit the full electronic version, but you will be asked to select one of the following options, on submission (see the Library Declaration and Deposit Agreement):

• This thesis can be made publicly available online.
• This thesis should not be made publicly available online.
• This thesis can be made publicly available online only after the following date……………………………(please tell us the date)
• I am submitting an additional, abridged version which can be made publicly available online, whilst the whole version cannot be.
  

It is very important that you consider what access we should allow to the electronic copy of your thesis that we will hold in WRAP. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Sensitivity or publication.
2. Your thesis contains third party copyright material.

Sensitivity

University rules permit you to request an embargo on access to your thesis for a specific period. This would apply to both the print and electronic versions. You should discuss this with your supervisor and follow the standard procedure for arranging an embargo, informing us that your thesis should not be made publicly available online when you submit.

If you are considering publishing your thesis, you should contact publishers to ask for their policies on thesis deposit in repositories. See our FAQ about publisher policies.

If you are considering patenting the idea(s) described in your thesis then you might find the Warwick Ventures web page on Intellectual Property useful. In order to obtain a patent, you must not have already published about the idea, and WRAP deposit would constitute publication.

Third Party Copyright Material

It is illegal to make an electronic version of your thesis available if your thesis contains third party copyright material, for which you do not have permission from the copyright holders to include. You can include it in your thesis that is submitted for the purposes of examination, without needing to seek any permissions from copyright holders. But we can't put an electronic version of your thesis online, if it contains third party copyright content that is not covered by another exception to copyright law or permission granted by the copyright holder.

There is a long established practice of print copies of theses being made available for consultation after they have been submitted for examination. However, access to those print copies has been restricted to those able to access a physical copy of the thesis, and rights holders have been comfortable with that. Allowing online access to theses requires more sensitivity to copyright law.

Third Party Copyright – what is that?

Third party copyright material includes extracts from publications such as books or journals, or illustrations such as images, maps, photographs, tables etc, including any that you have authored yourself, unless an exception applies or you entered into an agreement with your publisher that allows you to use your content for your thesis. A longer check list is provided below.

Copyright law allows referenced quotation of others’ work, so you don't need to worry about all content that you include from others' work. If you are including a substantial proportion of another's work, then you may still be allowed to copy it, if you do so in order to criticise or review the content that you have included. Such exceptions require you to make a judgement for yourselves, so you might want to consider whether you would be happy, as an author, with others copying a similar quantity of your own work, in such a way. When in doubt, it is always better to ask for permission.

Incidental inclusion of a trademark is not an infringement, e.g. if a photo or video clip happens to show a person wearing branded shoes, or drinking a coke.

Students' options:

a) Obtain permission from copyright holders and include evidence of this permission with the full thesis.

b) Submit an additional abridged version of your thesis without the copyright material but referring to it so that others can find it when reading your work. (You must still submit a whole copy, which will only be accessible to authorised members of University staff.) Please be clear to label the copies appropriately, upon submission.

c) Submit the full electronic version of your thesis to WRAP but stipulate that it must not be made openly accessible.

When do I need to ask for permission?

Obviously, not every quote or extract has to be covered by rights owners' permissions. Fair dealing allows for criticism and review, and for small extracts of others' work to be included with your own. How you interpret fair dealing under copyright law is really up to you. (NB it is not the same thing as "Fair Use" which applies in the USA.) If you are making a serious critical point and your argument cannot be justified without reproducing the content to which you refer then it may be covered by fair dealing and it's really up to you to make a judgement call on the matter.

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers have provided guidance on quotations and excerpts . You might find this helpful, particularly if you wish to include content from one of the 12 key publishers who signed up to this guidance. It makes clear statements about the inclusion of diagrams and illustrations, which are always more tricky to know how to handle than text. Please be aware though, that this document is just guidance and is not a licence of any kind.

How quick and easy is it to seek permission?

Our brief template below might help, but it will depend on what material you wish to include and who the rights owners are. It certainly will take time to gather permissions and you should ideally seek permission from the earliest stage at which you think you wish to include the content in your thesis, as you go along.

Rights owners might be the publisher, author, illustrator, etc, and it is a good idea to start by contacting the publisher. Publishers of your own work are generally inclined to let authors include their publication material in their online theses, but you will need to ask.

Publisher web sites are a good place to look for who to send your request to: look for information on copyright, permissions or clearance for example.

It may take a long time (weeks) for a rights holder to get back in touch with you, but a lack of response does not indicate permission to go ahead. Sometimes obtaining permission to use third party copyright content can be a tricky and lengthy process.

You can also ask for advice on seeking permissions from the WRAP staff: wrap@warwick.ac.uk

Template text for contacting a publisher

I am contacting you to seek permission to include the following material within the electronic version of my PhD thesis:

[Provide full details of the material you intend to include]

If you are not the rights holder for this material I would be grateful if you would advise me who to contact.

The thesis will be made available within the University of Warwick’s online research repository (http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap). The repository is non-commercial and openly available to all.

What do I do once I have the permission?

If a copyright holder indicates that permission has been granted you should indicate this at the appropriate point in your thesis, e.g. 'Permission to reproduce this ... has been granted by...'. You should keep a copy of any letters or e-mails you received from rights holders, and include electronic copies of them with your submission.

A publisher may wish to charge you a fee before they will allow you to use their content in your online thesis, but you do not have to pay unless you wish to. You do not have to make your thesis (or that content) available online.

What happens if I can’t get permission?

If you get no response, or if the response is a negative or too expensive for you, then you can use the option to embargo access to your thesis online, or submit a version of your thesis with un-permitted content removed.

Check list of things that might be in your thesis and which could be considered third party content.

• Photographs you did not take.
• Sections that you subsequently published without significant alteration in a journal or book.
• Long quotations from other works, even if properly attributed.
• Material for which a patent was granted.
• Models/diagrams sourced from books.
• Maps, such as Ordinance Survey photocopies, or sourced from books.
• Photocopies or scans of paintings (including portraits) and other artworks, or manuscripts/old accounts/other historical documents.

Other sensitive material which would mean embargoing access to your thesis includes:

• Patient or pupil details in clinic-based or education topics.
• Confidential data revealed by sponsors or through interviews/questionnaires.
• Real names or personal addresses in case studies or questionnaires.
• Evidence that animal testing was done.
• Partnerships with commercial companies who may have a stake in your results.
• An idea which you wish to patent.