Theses and dissertations
The University of Newcastle requires all research postgraduates to deposit a digital version of their thesis in our institutional repository Open Research Newcastle. Learn more about depositing your thesis.
Please check your thesis for any material that is subject to copyright. Scholarly citation practices generally do not cover reproduction and/or reuse of third-party copyright material in a thesis or dissertation - permission or a licence will need to be sought for the use.
If you have included any diagrams, illustrations, photographs, or other materials that are not your own work, you will likely need to seek permission from the copyright owner/s to be able to reproduce this material in your thesis online. The same may be true for articles or papers you have written where you transferred ownership over as part of a publishing agreement (see the Publishing and copyright accordion above for more on copyright transfer).
There are multiple ways permissions can be sought, depending on the material. For example, many journals have an online form that can be filled out via an article's abstract page. Other material may require use of an online inquiry form or an email - please contact the Copyright Advisor if you have any issues or concerns. Ideally, you should obtain the required permissions before submitting your thesis for examination.
Where materials included in your thesis are licensed under Creative Commons, use in your thesis will generally be covered by the licensing but you will still need to provide appropriate attribution for the material. Note that some licenses also restrict users' ability to modify the material - see the accordion on Making use of CC-licensed materials on the Open Licensing page for more.
If your examined thesis includes copyrighted material for which you cannot obtain permission, then this material may need to be removed. In this case, please contact the Copyright Advisor for advice before doing so. If you remove copyrighted material before submitting your thesis you will also need to upload the complete, as-examined thesis to be stored as a master copy. Please contact the Scholarly Publishing team if you have any questions around this process.
Our guide to Copyright in your digital thesis (PDF) has more information.
Need to keep track of copyright materials used in your thesis? Access our Copyright Checker spreadsheet.
The webinar video below covers what you should know about theses and copyright. You can watch similar videos in our Copyright, licensing and open access for research playlist.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.