Copyright and your thesis at Bristol
You can include any kind of material in your thesis when it is submitted for the purposes academic assessment, without the need for permission from copyright holders.
After academic assessment, your thesis can be deposited with the library and made available to external readers. There are several advantages to doing this:
1.Sharing your findings helps research to progress
2. Sharing improves the visibility of your research by exposing your work to search engines and external harvesting services
3. Sharing provides worldwide access to your work by potential collaborators, employers and research funders
4. Sharing helps meet your funder's expectations for open access, as detailed in the RCUK open access policy
Upon completion of your thesis, you'll be asked for your permission to make it available to external readers. This is a request for the copyright you hold to be shared with the University on a non-exclusive basis. However, the University cannot make a copy of your thesis available if it contains material that is not covered by a copyright exception or permission of the copyright holder.
If your thesis does contain such material, you have two choices:
1. Obtain permissions from the copyright holder and include details of these within your thesis e.g. 'Illustration copyright Sarah Jones, 2015. Used with permission of the author.'
2. Submit a version of your thesis with the copyright material removed, but referring to it so others can find it when reading your thesis
