Research essentials

Having an understanding of copyright is important at various stages of your research, from correctly using third-party copyright material in your thesis to evaluating author agreements with publishers. This page provides some useful links.

Resources for ACU researchers

• Copyright for researchers provides general information about copyright.
• Copyright information on the author rights and responsibilities page of our website.
• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Author Rights: Using the SPARC Author Addendum can help you monitor your rights to your published works.
• Scholar's Copyright Addendum Engine will generate a PDF form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights.
• The Australian Copyright Council is Australia’s leading copyright expert.

If you require further information contact the University Copyright Officer via email at copyrightofficer@acu.edu.au

Creative Commons Australia have developed a series of licences that cater to the various access and re-use wishes of copyright owners. Offering your work under a Creative Commons licence does not mean giving up your copyright; it means permitting users to make use of your material in various ways but only under certain conditions.

There are six basic licences that you can apply to your work, and they give users certain rights to use, share, attribute or distribute your work, depending on your wishes. The Creative Commons License Chooser can help you decide which licence is the best choice for your work.

Types of Creative Commons Licences

	CC BY	Attribution	Allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build with attribution. This is the most open licence.
	CC BY-SA	Attribution-ShareAlike	Allows users to distribute, remix, and adapt with attribution, as long as they license their new creations under the identical licence.
	CC BY-NC	Attribution-NonCommercial	Allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, with attribution.
	CC BY-NC-SA	Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike	Allows users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially with attribution, as long as they license their new creations under the identical licence.
	CC BY-ND	Attribution-NoDerivs	Allows users to distribute and reuse the work for any purpose with attribution, however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form.
	CC BY-NC-ND	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs	Allows users to redistribute with attribution. Does not allow users to revise, remix or use commercially. The most restrictive licence.

Based on About The Licenses - Creative Commons.

To download CC images and badges see Downloads - Creative Commons.

Publisher requirements

Most publishers have policies about which version of a journal article or conference paper they will allow to be deposited into an author’s institutional repository. To check what version a publisher will allow, consult the Sherpa/RoMEO database.

Most publishers do not permit any version of the full-text of books or book chapters to be hosted in the repository. There may be exceptions if the author has retained copyright of the work. Contact your librarian team for assistance.

Copyright takedown notice

If you believe that a copyright work is available in ACU Research Bank in such a way that constitutes a copyright infringement, or a breach of an agreed licence or contract, please contact Research Engagement via email at LibResearch@acu.edu.au.