Copyright support for students

Uploading a thesis or practicum to MSpace does not change copyright ownership, but the MSpace licence does give the University of Manitoba the right to make certain uses of your thesis or practicum. 

As authors, students are the copyright owners of the original content in their thesis or practicum. Students do not receive copyright ownership in content someone else created by incorporating it into their thesis or practicum; authorization (under the Copyright Act or directly from the copyright owner) for use of someone else's content is required, and copyright ownership typically remains with the original author or creator. Students also have something called “moral rights” (reputational rights, like the right to be attributed as a creator) in their thesis or practicum.  

Uploading a thesis or practicum to MSpace does not prevent a student from choosing to share, distribute, publish, or reuse their thesis or practicum provided no other agreement or copyright interest restricts this. Students should also ensure any other uses do not conflict with the permission given to the university to make the thesis or practicum available under the MSpace licence.   

If a student has co-authored any of the material in their thesis or practicum, the other author(s) will also have a copyright interest in the work. Consider obtaining the agreement of any co-authors to use jointly authored material in your thesis or practicum. If you are collaborating with others it is always good to clarify how you may use your joint efforts in future.  

Copyright law and research ethics are related concerns, but they can have different requirements:

• Copyright law distinguishes between ideas (which are not subject to copyright protection) and expressions (the way something is written, drawn, etc., and which is subject to copyright protection). 
• Both copyright law and the Responsible Conduct of Research – Code of Research Ethics Policy require you to provide attribution when using the work of others, but the RCR - Code of Research Ethics Policy also requires you to provide appropriate attribution to others when using their ideas, data, and methodologies and to accurately attribute authorship.

It is important to ensure applicable obligations under Copyright law and the RCR – Code of Research Ethics Policy are both met in your thesis or practicum.   

You remain the owner of the copyright in the original content in your thesis or practicum and can decide whether you want to publish or distribute your thesis or practicum, either commercially or non-commercially, without needing permission from the university. However, other ways you use your thesis or practicum should to be consistent with the rights you grant the university to make your thesis or practicum publicly available.

Also remember that different copyright considerations may apply to using someone else’s copyright protected material in a non-commercial research thesis or practicum than in a commercially published article or book. 

The university can keep, make and distribute copies of your thesis or practicum digitally or in print on a non-profit basis (cost recovery for printing, but not commercial publication), and make your thesis or practicum available in a publicly accessible online environment (MSpace). Your thesis or practicum may also be given to other organizations (including Library and Archives Canada) for these same purposes.  

The university is given these rights for the term of copyright, and includes copyright notices on all reproductions of theses or practicums made under the MSpace licence. 

The University of Manitoba’s MSpace thesis or practicum publication practices are similar to those at universities Canada-wide and aim to expand the body of publicly available research from the university community. 

If you want to include material that you did not create in your thesis or practicum (like figures, text or images), copyright permission may be required from the copyright owner(s).

With any material you want to use, even that you located freely online, start from the assumption that it is protected by copyright. Review the Copyright and Your Thesis/Practicum slides for guidance on when permission is needed, or send your questions to um.copyright@umanitoba.ca.  

Students must sign a declaration and licence stating that their thesis or practicum is copyright-compliant prior to uploading it to MSpace. This means that students must ensure any use of copyright protected materials in their thesis or practicum can be done under the Copyright Act (either through an exemption or the expiration of copyright), licence, term of use or with permission. Short quotes from someone else’s work that are appropriately cited do not typically require copyright permissions; see the Copyright infringement section of the UM copyright guidelines for more information.  

Many copyright holders have online permission forms or processes. Permission requests for many academic papers and texts can be made through the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You may also modify the sample copyright permission letter from the Copyright Office website to email and make your request. All of these are acceptable ways to obtain written permission. 

Obtaining permission may take a short amount of time (instantaneous) or a considerable amount of time (several months), so you should take this into account when considering your thesis submission deadline.   

If copyright permission was obtained, include a “Used with permission” statement under the image or text in the thesis or practicum. The permission email or licence provided by the copyright holder should be retained by the student, and does not need to be included in the body of the thesis or practicum or submitted to the university. 

In some cases, the copyright holder cannot be located or the cost of obtaining permission is prohibitive. In these situations, the text or image may have to be removed from the thesis or practicum. Instead, citation for the text or image can be included so that the reader can locate the content themselves, including a URL if available. 

Students sometimes ask the Copyright Office whether they are permitted to include materials in their thesis or practicum using a Copyright Act exemption like fair dealing. While the Copyright Office can provide information and guidance to help enable students to make copyright decisions, it cannot provide legal advice or a definitive answer to whether a use is fair because this is ultimately a legal decision that only a Court can make. Since students choose material to include in their thesis, it is also the students’ responsibility to decide how to clear the use of copyright protected materials they did not author. 

The Copyright Office website has a lot of information about Fair Dealing and other exemptions, but it is important to remember that the UM Copyright Guidelines address staff and instructors making copies for teaching and educational purposes and may not directly apply to use in a thesis or practicum. 

If you have any questions about including copyright protected materials in your thesis, please contact the Copyright Office.

Publishing before uploading a thesis or practicum to MSpace

Ensure that the terms of your publishing agreement will allow you to post your thesis or practicum to MSpace. Some publishers are granted copyright under publishing agreements.

If you give your copyright to a publisher you may be required to request permission back to include the published article in your thesis or practicum. Under other publishing agreements you may retain your copyright but not be permitted to publish the article in your thesis or practicum until after an embargo period (e.g.,  6 months to 1 year). 

It is difficult to generalize whether publishers will allow you to upload your thesis or practicum to MSpace after publication because publishing agreements differ.    

The  SHERPA/RoMEO database can be a useful resource to determine publisher copyright policies, but always review your publishing agreement prior to signing to confirm it will allow you to include your published work in your thesis or practicum.   

Publishing after uploading a thesis or practicum to MSpace 

Ensure that publishers know that you have already published your thesis or practicum in MSpace and that it is publicly accessible. Many publishers are willing to commercially publish content that was included in a thesis or practicum because the publication process requires vetting, peer review and editing. The reviewed and edited work can be seen as having a new copyright, making it different from the original thesis or practicum on MSpace. However, students are strongly encouraged to confirm the practices of individual publishers using the SHERPA/RoMEO database or directly rather than assuming all publishers will be agreeable to publishing a thesis or practicum that is already openly available.

Students should attempt to ensure that there is no content in their thesis or practicum that prevents it from being made publicly available on MSpace for copyright or publishing embargo reasons. Allowing public access to a thesis or practicum helps students on a reputational level to increase their exposure and the number of citations their thesis or practicum receives.  

Restrictions on access may be granted by the Faculty of Graduate Studies in special circumstances, but evidence of the need for a restriction needs to be provided, and restricted access is not guaranteed. 

If you require an embargo review the Embargo Request Form from the Faculty of Graduate Studies. 

See the Faculty of Graduate Studies Thesis Guidelines for detailed information on thesis or practicum preparation. 

Theses and practicums are not subject to automated plagiarism detection by the University of Manitoba, but students may request access to iThenticate software from the University to run plagiarism reports themselves. See iThenticate plagiarism detection software or contact iThenticate@umanitoba.ca for further information.