Copyright for Graduate Students

Copyright law comes into play at several stages of research and thesis/dissertation writing for graduate students.  This page provides tips for the different stages.

See this same information on a printable PDF:  Copyright for Graduate Students.  

Research Planning

If your research requires the use of copyrighted materials, you will want to make sure you have appropriate permissions in place before beginning. You don’t want to find out there is a problem after months or years of work!

Using Survey Instruments

Research using someone else’s survey instrument, whether published or unpublished, always requires permission from the copyright owner.  Some instruments can be purchased from companies and come with permission when you purchase.  Other instruments are found in scholarly articles.  You will need to get permission from the copyright owner, likely the authors of the article.   

If you are creating your own instrument, but it is based on a previous instrument, you need to get permission to use the original as well as permission to revise it.

Text/Data Mining

Research involving text or data mining may or may not require permission.  Here are things to consider:

Text and data mining are often allowed under “fair use” terms of copyright law.  Copyright and license issues arise when it comes to how you obtain the data or text you plan to mine.  If the text or data you want to use is freely available, you can usually proceed. However, many databases, like those the library subscribes to, do not allow downloading of large amounts of information without prior permission.  Downloading from a library database without first checking into the license may result in a campus-wide shutdown of that database and investigation.  For most library electronic resources, like journal articles, you will need to seek permission from the publisher to do text and data mining.  See Copyright FAQ page for more details.  

Using AI Tools

Using AI tools involves many considerations outside of copyright, but only copyright is the focus here.   Using AI tools with copyrighted materials or library licensed electronic resources can be a problem.  As of 4/15/2025, certain library licenses prohibit the use of journal/e-book content with any AI tool.   Others allow use with AI tools as long as the content is not used to train any public AI tool.   It is prohibited by MSU IT policies and also against MSU’s licenses to upload copyrighted material and library resources, such as articles, books, or question banks, into a generative AI tool. This is an evolving situation, so please contact copyright@msu.edu with any questions.  

Publishing Articles

You may publish one or more articles as a graduate student.  This involves thinking about your own copyright and that of others.

Your Own Copyright

When you create something, you are the copyright owner.  Nothing is needed for you to own copyright.  This can be a piece of writing or an image/photograph.  If you write an article with co-authors, all of you may own joint copyright.

Choosing the journal that you publish in can have copyright implications (It is not just about how important the journal is or its impact factor).   You will want to read your author contract!  

Traditional journals often require you (and your co-authors) to sign over copyright to the publisher.  You will no longer own copyright in your work and will have limitations on what you can do with your work.

Open Access journals allow you to keep your copyright.  Usually, they require you to license your article with one of the Creative Commons licenses.  You can read more about them at the Creative Commons site.  Creative Commons licenses mean you share your work with the world, not only to read but to reuse.

Using Other People’s Copyrighted Materials

If your article contains any parts that are not created by you or a co-author, you may need permission to publish them.   Citation is not the same as getting permission.

Short quotes of text do not require permission and are allowed under fair use.  This is when it is OK to just cite the source.

It is usually not OK to simply cite the source of an image.  Publishers will require you to have written permission for images before you can publish.

If your article is a scholarly analysis of a piece of artwork, including an image of the artwork may be justified under fair use.  

If you are including images that are not the object of scholarly analysis, you should get permission.  Always find the original source of an image where you can learn who is the creator or the organization that owns copyright.  Do not trust information found on secondary web sites like Wikimedia images.  You must do research to confirm the source.   

If you can confirm the image is licensed under a Creative Commons license, then it is free for you to use.

If the image has been published in a scientific book or journal, you may be able to reprint the image in an article in another scientific journal per the STM Agreement between science publishers. This list of signatories to the agreement tells you exactly what each publisher requires, whether you must get written permission or not and who to email.

For other publishers, you can request permission through Copyright Clearance Center.

For images found simply on web sites (not published in journals), you will need to find a contact and email for written permission.   

When you have permission, you should publish the citation and copyright information below the image with the words “reprinted with permission”. 

Thesis/Dissertation Writing

When it comes to writing your dissertation, you may be creating brand new content or may be reusing material that you have published previously.

Reusing Your Own Published Material

See above information about journal publishing. This is why it is important to read your author contract with the journal publisher.  Have you signed over copyright?  If so, you need to check the publisher web site for what is allowed. Most publishers, even the most traditional, allow you to reprint your article in a dissertation for no charge, but they still may require you to get written permission.

Often you can request permission through Copyright Clearance Center .  Check the journal web site for the journal that you published in.

If you published open access under a Creative Commons license, you still own copyright and control of your work and can republish however you want.

Using Other People’s Copyrighted Materials

The same rules apply as for reprinting images and other copyrighted materials in journal articles.  See above.

Thesis/Dissertation Publishing with ProQuest

ProQuest will ask you if you want to “copyright” your dissertation.  You already own copyright as soon as you create something.  No registration or anything formal is needed.  What they mean is, do you want to register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Copyright registration is usually only important if you foresee that you will need to prove your copyright in a court of law. If that is not likely, you probably don’t need to spend the money on registration.

You cannot register copyright to yourself if you have already signed over copyright to publish parts of your dissertation in a journal or book.  If you plan to re-publish parts of your dissertation in books or journal articles later, which can involve signing over copyright, registering copyright of your dissertation to yourself may be short-lived. Either way, the publisher will be the one defending copyright in case of infringements in the future.