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Introduction Submit the
ETD Questions
Additional Resources
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Copyright
and Intellectual Property Issues In this rapidly changing environment for publishing, there is no uniform practice being followed by all publishers. There is a general trend toward more publishers being willing to consider articles and book manuscripts that are connected with ETDs, but differences exist between academic fields and even between journals and publishers within a single field. Also, it is important to bear in mind that the more revisions you have made to differentiate an article from the chapter in the dissertation or a book from the whole dissertation, the more likely it is that a publisher will be open to considering your work and will be less threatened by its prior publication as an ETD. Again, the safest course to take is to ask publishers about their policies before you decide whether to impose restrictions on the distribution of your ETD so that it will not hinder your ability to publish articles or books derived from your ETD. As for the rules of copyright, including what and how much you may reproduce from other works in your own as "fair use," the ultimate responsibility for learning the rules lies with you, whether you are publishing your research as an ETD, or later, in a revised form as a journal article or book. UMI (University Microfilms International, now Bell & Howell Information and Learning) offers the service of checking dissertations that are submitted to it for potential copyright problems, but like all regular publishers UMI also asks the author to warrant that the dissertation does not infringe any copyright, or other rights (such as privacy and libel), so that the liability for any such infringement in the end resides with the author, not the publisher. For a fee, UMI will register the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office - an important step to take because of the extra protection such as registration affords an author whose work is later infringed. Further information regarding copyright information can be found in the Thesis and Dissertation Guide. |
