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Copyright: Students - study and research

Provides students with information on responsibilities around copying other peoples' work for the purpose of study and research.

Using your own images

If you created the image (this is usually the case when you are displaying your own data that you have compiled in a graph or chart, or your own photograph), you do not need to reference it, no citation or copyright attribution is required. The image must be clearly labelled with a table or figure number and title.

 

IMPORTANT: Please note that this only applies if you have not used the images you created in any other published work prior to this one. If you have, the image(s) must be cited according to standard citation rules.

As your work is going to be published in the open access repository (ResearchOnline), this method of ‘labelling’ your own images means that anyone wanting to use your work in the future knows how to cite your images within their own work. 


What if I've edited an image of mine to include another component?

Please view the examples provided in the APA Referencing Guide: Referencing Images | Own Images webpage. Here you will see that you can use the term “figure” in your citations. This will encompass the merged figures that contain both an image and a diagram, as the merged figure is deemed as a separate entity to the individual image and diagram. You would therefore provide the most recent date for this figure.

As an example, you will then have three versions of the items you created:

  • Photograph 2018 (taken previously)
  • Diagram 2020 (put together more recently)
  • Figure 2020 (contains both the photograph and the diagram as one item)

Creative Commons

If you are adding original images to your thesis, please consider using a Creative Commons licence to ensure that people know what scenarios you are happy for others to reuse your images within.
 

CC-BY-NC-SAGenerally a thesis can be licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International licence. This means that you are happy for people to reuse your work (CC), but they must credit you (BY), it must not be for commercial output (NC), and they are to share your work using the same CC licence (SA).
 

More information about this specific licence can be found in the Copyright: An Overview | Creative Commons guide.
 

Creative Commons LicenceAnother option you have is the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. This is based on the above premise, but instead of share alike (SA), you can use the No Derivative works option (ND). This means that they cannot edit your images in any way, and must reuse/share them as they are, or request permission from you to repurpose them.

 

Please view the Choose a Licence site for information on how to create a licence. These licences cover you for reuse internationally under each of the Creative Commons 4.0 International Licences.