Copyright Issues

Copyright Registration

Doctoral candidates at the University of Chicago are required to grant ProQuest Information and Learning non-exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute their dissertations. You hold the copyright for your own dissertations and retain the right to publish elsewhere. Copyright registration is not a degree requirement.

You may decide to have UMI manage copyright registration for you. If you complete the Copyright Registration Form on page 5 of Publishing Your Graduate Work with UMI Dissertation Publishing, you must also provide a money order to cover their fee for this service.

You may decide to register copyright on your own. The United States Copyright Office provides access to forms and publications and information on copyright law and on the history of the Copyright Office.

You may register copyright or not, through ProQuest's UMI Dissertation Publishing or on your own, as you choose.

Copyright Permissions

Doctoral candidates at the University of Chicago are required to grant ProQuest Information and Learning non-exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute their dissertations. Since you are publishing your dissertation, if you use previously copyrighted material beyond "fair use," you must obtain written permission from the copyright holder to use the material in your dissertation. If another publisher has accepted your manuscript for publication, you should be sure to retain the right to sign the ProQuest/UMI publishing agreement. Many scientific journals have standing agreements with ProQuest; most academic presses, however, do not.

As you prepare your doctoral dissertation for submission to the University of Chicago, you must consider copyright issues and fair use, and you must request permission to use material when appropriate. Your advisor and others in your school or department should provide assistance with these issues, but you may also find some of the following web sites helpful.

Copyright Law & Graduate Research: New Media, New Rights, and Your New Dissertation, by Kenneth D. Crews

This booklet, published by ProQuest Information and Learning, will guide you in meeting their requirements. If ProQuest/UMI believes that you have included previously copyrighted material without written permission, they will not provide access to your dissertation, and this is not acceptable. Publishing your dissertation through ProQuest/UMI is one of the requirements for receiving a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago Copyright Information Center

The University provides access to information about copyright, fair use, and permissions for faculty and staff. Further information includes links to laws and regulations and informative web sites.

Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property

Susan Bielstein's book examines copyright law and the use of images. This book is available in the Library. You can find other books on copyright by searching the library catalog. Note that books with "Authorship -- Handbooks" in a subject heading may be just as useful for working on your dissertation as books with "Copyright" in a subject heading. For example, The Chicago Manual of Style includes relevant information.

The University of Chicago Library

Links to a number of other web sites are provided by the D'Angelo Law Library (Intellectual Property: Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks), the John Crerar Library (Copyright and Intellectual Property), and the Special Collections Research Center (Copyright Information Sites.)

Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Material in the public domain is not protected by intellectual property rights. This web site promotes research and discussion of public domain issues and public policy. Includes links to events, projects, articles, and publications, among them Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?, a comic book that is both informative and fun to read.

Permission to Use University of Chicago Dissertations or Other University of Chicago Material

Requesting Permission to Reproduce or Publish Material from a University of Chicago Dissertation: Those who wish to use material from University of Chicago dissertations in their own work, beyond fair use, must contact the author of the dissertation (or other copyright holder if applicable) for permission.

Requesting Permission to Reproduce or Publish Material from the University of Chicago Press: General contact information includes details on requesting permission to use material from University of Chicago Press publications. Copyright and permissions information includes Copyright Guidelines and University of Chicago Guidelines for Fair Use of Our Publications.

Requesting Permission to Reproduce or Publish Material from the Special Collections Research Center: Researchers must submit written for permission to reproduce or publish material from rare books, manuscripts or archival material owned by the University of Chicago Library. Quotations from text that fall within the fair use guidelines of the United States Copyright law do not require written permission from the Library.