There's no legal requirement to register copyright in the UK in order to obtain it.
All work is protected by copyright on creation, regardless of whether or not it is published. This includes work created by our students and staff. For further information please see our overview of copyright.
It's good practice to include a copyright statement within your work. You should include:
The University recognises that undergraduate and postgraduate taught students own the copyright to any work they create during their course of study.
Arrangements are different for postgraduate research students.
When you register, we'll ask you to assign your commercially exploitable Intellectual Property (IP) rights to the University.
The University will then own these IP rights arising from your research during your course of study. Examples include patentable IP, protectable design rights and copyright in computer software.
Once you have assigned your IP rights to the University, you'll receive a proportion of any revenue that's generated from your research.
See the Research Code of Practice (under 'Research policies and guidelines') for more information on assigning IP (page 10) and the Royalty Sharing arrangements.
You must notify your academic supervisor immediately if a funding agreement prevents you from assigning your IP rights to the University.
You will continue to own the copyright in your thesis, provided you haven’t assigned it elsewhere. Under University Regulations all final theses must be deposited in an open access institutional repository through which theses are made publicly available to download. The repository for theses at Strathclyde is called STAX and a thesis will only be accepted into STAX when the degree of which it forms part has been fully awarded by the University of Strathclyde.
If you wish to publish your thesis (after examination) you will need to seek permission from the copyright owner for any third party content you have included unless there is a clear statement on the work saying it can be reused or you can justify including it under a copyright exception. This includes depositing it in STAX as this is publicly accessible.
If the publication of your thesis may prejudice a patent application or otherwise disclose information the University considers confidential, you may be required to add a moratorium to your thesis for a limited time to protect the information. This means it will not normally be accessible to staff, students or the public.
Contact us if you'd like to know more or consult our Copyright & Your Thesis Libguide.
Postgraduate research students must grant the University a perpetual and royalty-free licence to use such material for non-commercial teaching, research and academic purposes.
As with all other students, you will normally retain your copyright in all books, articles, theses and papers you produce while you're a student. There may be exceptions to this, such as if the University commissioned you to produce a piece of work.
Speak with your academic supervisor if you have any questions or concerns about assigning your IP rights to the University.
Unless there is an agreement to state otherwise, the University will own the copyright to works created by staff in the course of their employment.
Although this is the legal position, the University may waive its right to ownership of copyright in books, journals and publications created by staff, in line with academic practice.
You will own copyright in publications you create, although you'll normally be asked to assign your copyright as part of the agreement with the publisher. Once you have done this, the publisher will own the copyright to your work. You will normally continue to retain 'moral rights' and be recognised as the author.
If you create work with a colleague/colleagues, you will both own the copyright within the work you created. One party cannot reuse the work without consent of the other, unless you have a formal agreement stating otherwise.
You'll require permission to reuse work if the relevant licences held by the University and/or the copyright exceptions do not allow you to use the work in the way you wish.
Obtaining copyright permission can be a lengthy process, and rights owners may charge a fee for the reuse of their material. Please contact our team if you need help or advice.
There are several different rights that relate to ownership of recordings of audio and video content including copyright, performance rights, and moral rights. For staff involved in developing audio and video teaching resources and recording content outside of teaching provision including recording webinars, podcasts, or conference presentations the University has a suite of guidance and consent forms.
Contact us if you have any questions regarding the appropriate form to use
If an audience is included and they are the focus of the recording:
Visit Jisc for more information about the legal implications of recording lectures.
As part of the publishing process, the author normally assigns their copyright to the publisher. This means the publisher will own the copyright and can control the reuse of the article.
Publishers do not normally permit articles to be published on a commercial server.
If you have assigned your copyright to a publisher and signed a contract (Copyright Transfer Agreement), then you are legally bound to comply with the contract terms and statute law on copyright.
You should check the terms of the contract you entered into with the publisher to determine if this type of reuse is permitted.
You may find it useful to check the Sherpa/Romeo site for publisher policies.
Publishers have provided non-commercial exceptions to their Copyright Transfer Agreements to allow manuscripts to be made available via not-for-profit servers only.
Not-for-profit servers are typically institutional repositories.
Commercial sites (such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu) are not covered by the exceptions. Many publishers explicitly forbid using these commercial sites as a means of publishing. Additionally, posting to these sites does not meet research funder Open Access compliance requirements.
Sharing your article on an academic social networking is lawful if you retain the copyright.
Always check a website's terms and conditions for information on reuse, sharing and copyright.