Guide to Copyright and the Research Repository - Protection For Your Work

Once uploaded to the repository your work enjoys the same Copyright protection as it would on any web page or publisher’s database page. Ownership is unchanged as the permissions to upload to the repository and Open Access Archiving are non-exclusive and do not require that Copyright is transferred to the University. Publishers retain the Copyright of published work unless they explicitly state otherwise. Some allow copyright to revert to the author after a period of time. Again the specific policies and agreements available for most publications need to be consulted.

In order that the principles of Open Access Archiving can be upheld and to encourage scholarly use and development of research in a safe and equitable way the repository uses the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution- Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 licence in relation to unpublished work on the repository such as etheses. The Creative Commons licence offers standardized and clear protection for the users the repository and for the students and staff. It allows end users to copy, distribute, play and perform the work and to make derivative works, as long as full attribution is given citing both the author and the source, the use of the work is non-commercial and derivatives are shared and distributed under this same licence.

This licence does not impact upon or over write any existing Copyright or other legislative requirements and similar licence is extended over the repository database itself and its collections. Database rights in this repository rest with the University of Central Lancashire.