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Protect your own Intellectual Property

The other side of Copyright Law is that it will protect your rights in your own creative work, give credit for your innovation via attribution, and possibly generate royalties.

Publishing your own material

When you have created your own original research you may want to get it published, or sometimes a publisher will offer to publish your PhD thesis, or extracts from it in book form. It's advisable to read the contract carefully to see how much of your rights you are signing over to the publisher - there may be room for some negotiation.

There are many sources of advice on checking the licence and what to look for when agreeing terms with publishers, some examples can be found here

Society of Authors

Writers and Artists

You may have intellectual property items to trademark or patent, please seek advice from the Business Partnership Unit

 

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Third Party Content

Any Third Party content in your work (tables, graphs, significant extracts, journal articles, images etc.) will need to have permission granted before you can include it for publication. Requests can usually be made via publisher's websites for previously published material, but your publisher may do this for you. It is acceptable to re-draw diagrams or data tables yourself for inclusion if required, as you are not copying the original. However all sources must be attributed to avoid plagiarism.

Open Access Publishing

Open Access publishing can increase your citations and disseminate your work globally. For more information please click below

Open Access Publishing for Aston Authors

Getting permission

Getting permission to re-use copyrighted materials can be a time-consuming, expensive and frustrating experience. It's advisable to:

  • get permission in writing
  • keep all relevant correspondence

Remember that no permission means no use! If you fail to get a reply to your request you should take this as a refusal