Intellectual Property Issues

ProQuest / UMI

All master's and doctoral students who submit an electronic thesis or dissertation are required to participate in the ProQuest / University Microfilms Inc. (UMI) Abstract publishing program (participation for Problem Reports, Project Reports or Research Projects is optional).
Each participant's abstract shall be published in the Master's Theses or Doctoral Dissertations Abstracts publications.
As your publisher, ProQuest/UMI offers your dissertation for sale and pays you royalties in any year in which your 10% accrues to $10.00 or more. If you did not restrict distribution of your dissertation when you signed your author agreement, we assume that you want the broadest possible distribution of your work. If you are no longer comfortable making your work broadly available, we can restrict sales of your work per your instruction. Please contact our author relations team at disspub@il.proquest.com or 1-800-521-0600, extension 7020 if that is your desire.
You may also limit distribution at the time of graduation; simply provide a completed ProQuest/UMI Non-Distribution Memo with your Publishing Agreement form. To re-authorize ProQuest/UMI to distribute copies of your thesis or dissertation, you may send an email request to disspub@umi.com to make arrangements for this. You will need to cite your name, document title and Proquest publication number along with your request. Questions may be directed to the University Libraries.
New Open Access Distribution Option
The now-common usage of the term "open access" means freely available for viewing or downloading by anyone with access to the internet, indefinitely. The cost for this service is $95.00 in addition to the customary Abstract publishing fee required ($55.00 or $65.00 for theses or dissertations respectively. For additional information see the UMI/ProQuest "Agreement Forms".
An archival microfilm master copy will be produced from the electronic document (where applicable), which is retained in perpetuity in the ProQuest/UMI and Library of Congress archives. For preservation purposes, ProQuest/UMI may utilize alternate storage media such as CD-ROM for use in situations where multimedia submissions cannot be reproduced by conventional means.
Additional information can be found in the UMI Publishing Booklets from our Submission Forms Web page or the University Libraries.
Fast Facts about ProQuest, Google, and Amazon

Expanding access to Dissertations and Theses

What's new?

As of January 1, 2007 ProQuest/UMI has discontiuned its indexing service with Amazon.com. They are in the process of removing all entries from the Amazon indices. Now, your graduate works have better exposure than ever. ProQuest/UMI will continue its arrangement with Google Scholar to allow searching on the current and most recent prior year's dissertations and theses. Searches will access abstracts and bibliographic information (title, author, date of publication).

Is this good for graduate students?

Most scholars benefit from increased exposure to their published work, so the ubiquity of Google should benefit most graduate students. Additionally, these new dissemination avenues broaden author exposure beyond the traditional research community.

Authors also earn royalties on UMI sales through ETDs indexed on Google Scholar. Please remind students that as long as they keep their contact information up-to-date with ProQuest/UMI, they earn 10% royalties payable in any year that royalties reach a minimum of $10.00.

Is this good for my institution?

Increasing the public availability of scholarly research is a goal shared by many sectors of society, including federal funding agencies and philanthropic foundations. Your institution's governance and alumni, your community, your state legislators are constituencies who will be pleased to find graduate works available through familiar resources like Google.

A statement about convenient and reliable public availability of graduate work in grant proposals and reports is a good way to help satisfy the outreach and impact expectations of federal funding agencies.

What about Open Access and free institutional access?

Our efforts through Google are about expanding the availability of dissertations and theses beyond the scholarly community. Obviously, these commercial sources are not intended to substitute for the kinds of liberal and/or free access that researchers normally have to dissertations and theses.

ProQuest/UMI now offers a new option for dissertations and theses published under the new Expanded Publishing with Open Access model. For additional information see the UMI/ProQuest "Publishing Booklets".

What if a student/author doesn't want their work to be made available through Google Scholar?

ProQuest allows several ways to restrict access, in whole or in part. Students/authors who prefer not to see their work distributed for sale to the public can direct ProQuest to place a restriction on their dissertation/thesis.

Students/authors who have reasons to more fully restrict the distribution of their work should work with the graduate school and ProQuest/UMI at the time of submission to arrange embargo or restriction. For details see the introductory section above.

Finally, students/authors who prefer to offer free access should consider submitting his or her dissertation / thesis under the new Expanded Publishing for Open Access option.

Copyright

Copyright application is optional but recommended for both doctoral and master's students. If statutory copyright has been or will be claimed, a copyright notice is normally listed in the manuscript (see the sample title page).

Anyone may apply for copyright registration by filing directly through the U.S. Copyright Office.
Students may wish to use the copyright registration service offered by UMI. Copyright service also requires participation in their abstract publication service (required for most submissions). Also see the Master's Thesis Agreement Form or Doctoral Dissertation Agreement Form for more information.
Students who desire the copyright service offered through UMI should sign the appropriate section of the Agreement Form and pay the required fee of $65.00 (subject to change) by check or money order payable to West Virginia University Libraries. For more information, consult the Submission Checklists, Publishing Your Dissertation or Publishing Your Master's Thesis.
UMI and WVU require each student to certify that any extensive use of copyrighted material in the manuscript has the written permission of the copyright owner. Written permission must be included with the Submission Packet. UMI also requires that the student "save and hold harmless" UMI from any damages which may arise from copyright violations. The student acknowledges this requirement by signing the UMI Agreement Form. Please see the WVU Copyright Policy for more information.
The student is required to obtain written permission from the author or publishers to quote extensively from copyrighted material. Such permission is usually granted on condition that acknowledgment is made. If payment is required, this is the student's responsibility. Permission for the use of all such materials must be obtained before the thesis or dissertation is submitted to the University Libraries.
Reprints may be used in the body of a thesis or dissertation if the student is the primary author or has been primarily responsible for the publication. This assumes the student has had primary responsibility for the research as well as the preparation and the editing of the manuscript. Permission to use reprints may be required by the publisher.
Bound By Law?
A clever comic book style approach to copyright, fair use and popular media, sponsored by Duke University - Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Copies of this book will soon be available from the University Libraries.
Copyright Law and Graduate Research
New Media, New Rights, and Your New Dissertation: Copyright Compliance and Fair Use Issues (ProQuest / Kenneth D. Crews / Indiana University)
Copyleft
Copyleftmedia originated in 2002 as the homepage for the book 'Copyleft: Creativity, Technology and Freedom?' by Miriam Clinton, and as a discussion forum for the use of Free, Open Source, Creative Commons and other alternative licenses in the arts.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers free and flexible copyright licenses for creative works.
Getting Permission: How to License & Clear Copyrighted Materials Online & Off. Copies of this book are available from the University Libraries.
The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More. Copies of this book are available from the University Libraries.

Fair Use Basics

When we think of the concept of "fair use" we need to remember the following:

When you include third party sources of quotes, information or materials, regardless whether copyrighted or public domain, formally published or not, you must include appropriate citations and/or references about the original source. This is not your intellectual property; to do otherwise constitutes plagiarism.
Limited reproduction of information and materials from third party sources is permissible in an educational context, where commercial or financial gain is not the intent or motive.
The traditional concept of using "no more than 10%" of the original source material is not upheld by copyright law. Rather, the emphasis has more to do with the potential harm, economic or otherwise that the use of the material may constitute for the original source owner.
Full reproduction of information and materials from third party sources is acceptable in the educational context only when appropriate permissions from authors/editors/publishers has been granted. Often a brief email or written request and reply to and from the source owner (copyright holder) is all that is required for inclusion of the material in the thesis or dissertation. A source owner may include a publisher, editor and/or the author of the material; contact information is generally available from the publication data of the copyrighted source material, publisher's or individual's Web site or institutional directories. In these situations some publishers may request at least initial restriction of the online distribution of the thesis or dissertation.
Limited use (i.e. excerpts, examples, low resolution versions, etc.) rather than reproduction of an entire original third party copyrighted work is appropriate.
Traditionally fair use has been applied successfully with words in print documents. Now with the advent of the digital frontier, we are beginning to see the inclusion of third party multimedia works in ETD's, such as graphic images, film clips, etc. While these cases are sometimes contested in courts, there should be no reason why the fair use concept should not be applied in similar manner to new media forms of expression.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the University Libraries.
Additional information about copyright and fair use is available below.
Fair Use Fact Sheet
From the U.S. Copyright Office
Fair Use In An Online World
© 2002, PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.
- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349 [1991])

"Fair use" has been a popular rallying cry of Internet music aficionados hoping to preserve the freewheeling world of online music. As appealing as this may sound, defending the rights of the consumer has never been the intention of the fair-use provisions of copyright law. The provisions are intended only as a limit on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Fair use attempts to balance the rights of the artist with the interests of society in a manner that promotes the furtherance of the art. Justice David Souter has described fair use as "the guarantee of breathing space for new expression within the confines of copyright law"(Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 114 S.Ct. 1164, 127 L. Ed. 2d 500 [1994]). The individual consumer is rarely under the protective wing of fair use.

The fair-use doctrine evolved in the judiciary during the course of numerous court decisions and was eventually codified in the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 USC 107). The Copyright Act specifies four criteria for determining what constitutes fair use. Even with these guidelines, what is and is not allowed is far from clear-cut and can be determined definitively only by a judge on a case-by-case basis. Here are the fair-use factors specified in section 107 of the Copyright Act.

The purpose and character of the use, including whether it is intended for commercial or nonprofit use. Fair-use rulings have overwhelmingly favored nonprofit endeavors, but several commercial applications have also been accepted. For example, a paid critic is allowed to quote or excerpt from copyrighted works to facilitate a commercial review. Generally, this provision is intended to allow duplication of copyrighted works to facilitate scholarship, research, and teaching.

The nature of the copyrighted work. Being unpublished strengthens a copyright claim. Historically, greater copyright protection has been awarded to unpublished works than to published works. Similarly, fair use is more protective of creative works than of factual ones.

The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. There is no hard-and-fast rule to determine how much of a copyrighted work may be duplicated under fair use. In ruling, judges have generally weighed this factor when considering purpose of use and the potential impact on the copyrighted work.

The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work. The potential for negative impact on a copyrighted work takes several factors into account, including when the work was published, how accessible it is currently, and its expected economic life span and value. Taken together, these factors will help determine if the duplicate, quote, or excerpt supports a replacement for the copyrighted work. If it does not, fair use is more likely to be granted.

While seemingly straightforward, these factors can lead to ambiguous or conflicting interpretations of the law. For example, a 3-second bass riff sampled from a 5-minute song represents only 1/100th of the copyrighted work and so would seem to be covered by the third fair-use criterion. When this riff is incorporated into a commercially released song, however, the first factor, nature of use, trumps amount and substantiality, pushing the sample outside the bounds of fair use.

Judicial precedent has settled some general case issues. The seminal example is "time shifting" as approved by the Supreme Court in 1984 (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417). That decision defined home taping of television programs for noncommercial, private viewing at a later time as fair use. Most online music users assume that space-shifting songs - moving music from one format to another such as ripping a CD to an MP3 file - is covered under the same decision. It isn't. Space-shifting, even for personal use, has not been definitively determined to fall under the rubric of fair use.

Like most things in the online world, copyright law and fair use are still being defined. Although many lawyers believe that space-shifting and other duplication for personal and noncommercial purposes constitutes fair use, the ultimate decision still comes from a judge's bench. In its current state, fair use is by no means a right.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism - Up close and Personal
Resources from University of North Alabama

Plagiarism.org
Research Resources on Plagiarism and information on "Turnitin" plagiarism detection software. This software is available at WVU via the Vista system or by contacting the WVU Office of Information Technology.

Preventing Plagiarism
Resources from UCLA

Sources - Their Use and Acknowledgement
Plagiarism resources from Dartmouth College

Patent Pending

Electronic submissions will be embargoed from any public access according to current ETD Policy. See also the "No Access" option under the Web distribution section below. Should you have questions regarding the proprietary nature of your research, you should consult your advisor or the WVU office of Technology Transfer for more details. The Evansdale Library also has extensive information and assistance available on searching patent holdings, applying for patent licensing, etc.

Publishing Issues

Your electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) will contribute to worldwide graduate education as we build a Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) in collaboration with other scholarly institutions. We are writing to address concerns and questions you may have about how this relates to other types of publication. Please read the Web distribution information that appears below, and feel free to contact the University Libraries if you have further questions.

The Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Initiative at WVU has several goals, including to help you in your career, to help other learners and researchers, and to make available many works that are now "lost" (e.g., theses that led to no other publications and that only are available through inter-library loan).

Most publishers contacted by the NDLTD Project Team support our initiative, realizing that theses and dissertations are very different from previously published or derivative books and articles. We believe that making ETDs available will supplement the efforts of publishers so both activities can proceed in harmony. We urge you to prepare your ETD to harmonize with publishing practices, and so that your research becomes as widely disseminated as possible, as soon as possible.

Journal Policy Portal: The University of Cincinnati has launched the Academic Journal Policy Database. Experience shows that violating publishers' publication policies is one of the main concerns of faculty and students embarking on electronic submission of a thesis or dissertation (ETDs). It is often difficult to discover the publishers' policies and thus even more difficult to properly inform faculty and students about these policies. In response to this problem, the University of Cincinnati has developed a database of links to publishers' journal policies called the Academic Journal Policy Database (AJPD). Our goal is to provide a global mechanism for students, faculty, administrators, and publishers to share information and facilitate electronic publishing education.

WVU Web Distribution Options at WVU

World

The University and ETD Task Force recommend making the information freely available worldwide.

It should be noted that historically this option may have been perceived by a few book or journal publishers as "publishing" the work, thus they may have seen a conflict with this level of distribution of the thesis or dissertation. However, today the vast majority of publishers (in fact over 80%) support the archiving of a thesis or dissertation in an open access institutional repository such as the WVU ETD collection. Presently over 75% of WVU students use the "World" access option. Recent studies by Suber, Harnad, etc. demonstrate that scholars who deposit their works as open access increase their citation rates between 2 and 5 times more than simply relying on academic journal article publishing. The recognition factor is vital for budding scholars, hence we embrace open access to scholarship.
Campus Only

Makes the ETD freely available only to the WVU community (via login to the WVU eTD system) and as requested through the OCLC Interlibrary Loan (ILL) lending program.

Access will be provided by interlibrary sharing of electronic or printed copies as requested.

Campus only distribution will continue from year to year without special notification for a period of up to five years after the submission date, after which time it will revert to 'World Wide Distribution'. You may change the Web distribution to "World" access at any time by sending an email to John.Hagen@mail.wvu.edu.

This option addresses situations such as when a book or article is planned, and the book or journal publisher is concerned that prior publishing through a digital library will negatively impact on sales.

Limiting distribution to "Campus Only" is generally accepted to be the equivalent to the "paper copy on the shelf".

Our best advice is for the student to contact prospective publishers to learn about their publishing policy. Many publishers have this information provided on their Web sites; if not, usually a simple email query to the editor will resolve any questions. You may also wish to check the Academic Journal Policy Database, hosted by the University of Cincinnati.

Campus Encrypted

This option is similar to the "Campus Only" option above but the pdf file access is password protected. This option is useful to students who may have a contractual publisher obligations regarding thesis or dissertation derivative publications being released at the time of graduation.

This option secures the entire work by personal request for a period of up to three years. At the end of the three year period, either the student or proxy may request an automatic extension of up to two additional years. You may change the Web distribution to "World" access at any time by sending an email to John.Hagen@mail.wvu.edu.

Access will be provided by interlibrary sharing of printed copies only.

The student will determine an appropriate encryption password with the ETD Program Coordinator / Archivist. We recommend a password with a minimum of 8 characters, it can be mixed case, it can include alphabetic and numeric characters, and should be something not too obvious but that you will remember. Files should be uploaded without encryption; the password will be applied by the ETD Archivist. You will be prompted for your password during the online submission process.

No Access

Secures the entire work for patent, proprietary, data sensitivity and/or third-party funding sponsorship purposes for a period of one year.

During this period the copyright owner also agrees not to exercise her/his ownership rights, including public use in future works, without prior authorization from West Virginia University.

At the end of the one year period, either the student or proxy may request an automatic extension for one additional year. You may change the Web distribution to "World" access at any time by sending an email to John.Hagen@mail.wvu.edu.

This Information is also specified in the WVU ETD Policy manual.

Revised 11 January, 2008

Intellectual Property Issues

ProQuest / UMI

Copyright

Fair Use Basics

Plagiarism

Patent Pending

Publishing Issues

WVU Web Distribution Options at WVU

World

Campus Only

Campus Encrypted

No Access