Library Research Support Services

Licencing your thesis: select CC BY-NC

You will retain the copyright to your published open access thesis. A Creative Commons machine readable re-use licence will make it clear for readers who find your work to understand what they are allowed to do with it.

The University's Doctoral College Board approves CC BY-NC licence as the recommended licence for theses which makes clear that your work cannot be used for commercial gain.

Note that most research funders require the most 'open' of licences (CC-BY) for outputs of funded research to encourage maximum reuse and application of the research findings.  Authors/creators are always attributed as copyright holders regardless of the licence chosen.
 

What are Creative Commons licences?

CC licences provide clear indication of how work may be used, reused and distributed.  There is a standard, machine readable logo for each licence type and the general public clicking on these logos will find a clear explanation of how the work can and cannot be used.  Creative Commons licences can be as restrictive or as Open as required.  Often, they are used by creators and authors to remove some of the barriers to reuse of their work to encourage future development. 

There are six main Creative Commons licenses - you can find out more about these on the Creative Commons website. 

Open Access in Pure

When you deposit your work via Pure into PEARL you are asked to enter a Thesis publication date.  Choose today's date to ensure maximum visibility and reach for your work:

What is an embargo and should I apply one?

An embargo is a temporary lock applied to your thesis that prevents public download until the end of the embargo period. 

However, in specific circumstances, you can opt to select a date up to 1 year in the future to place a temporary embargo upon your work.  

Temporary embargo scenarios

Pure asks you to select the reason you are choosing to place a temporary embargo upon your work:

• Patent/commercial sensitivity This reason can also apply to Accepted Manuscripts of your recent publications you may have included in your thesis which may still be under publisher embargo (see tab: 'Including your published articles in your thesis'.)  
• Material of thesis of significance to an individual's personal safety Do not select this option.  If there is sensitive data, this should be redacted entirely.  See guidance on this page: 'Deposing the Full or Full & Edited versions of your thesis."
• Publication pending You do not typically need to embargo your work in order to publish from it (see next tab: 'Publishing from your thesis' for more information).  If you select this option, you may be contacted by the Library or Doctoral College to assist in any negotiations with your publisher.  

Publishing from your thesis

You do not typically need to embargo your work in order to publish from it. 

Students may wish to embargo for purposes of future publication opportunities based on your thesis. However, these days, many publishers do not view thesis publishing as prior publication and in any case would usually require a substantial review of structure for a new audience. Therefore, to publish from your thesis is rarely a reason to apply an embargo period.

PEARL is a non-commercial archive of University outputs. Most publishers are understanding of the purpose of open theses via repositories and have stated that an open thesis is not considered prior publication.
 

Publishing chapters from your thesis as journal articles

• Nature​: "Nature Portfolio will consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification."
• Elsevier: (scroll to question on prior publication) "Elsevier does not view the following uses of a work as prior publication: ... publication as an academic thesis."
• Wiley: "The following types of “prior publication” do not present cause for concerns about duplicate or redundant publication:....Dissertations and theses in university archives."
   

Publishing your thesis as a monograph

Many publishers recognise that a book based on a thesis would undergo extensive revision and so would be substantially different from your open access thesis:

• Cambridge University Press: ‘A monograph based on a thesis would only be considered for publication after extensive revision. Therefore, an embargo on the original thesis is not generally an essential requirement.’
• Palgrave Macmillan and Edinburgh, Liverpool and Manchester University Presses are further examples of publishers who accept proposals based on theses, even when they have been made available in online repositories.  This is because theses must be significantly revised in order to be considered for publication.

Some publishers, such as Routledge, have no blanket policy but will look at each case on an individual basis. 

If you are approached by publishers purporting to publish your thesis without any revisions you should be careful to accept such offers and discuss with your supervisors or the Library. 

Advice on revising your thesis for monograph publication:

• Cambridge University research skills: thesis to monograph
• UCL Press: from thesis to monograph

Including your published articles in your thesis 

If you have published articles you would like to include in your thesis you will need to consider whether you signed your copyright away to the publisher upon publication:

• If your paper is Open Access on the publisher site and licenced CC-BY, you will be able to include the publisher's .pdf version i.e. because the author has retained the copyright. This is known as Gold open access.
• Most authors though find that their publisher owns the copyright of their work. If your paper is behind a paywall then copyright will be the publisher's.  With paywalled articles, you can usually include the Author's Accepted Manuscript version into your thesis.  This is known as Green open access.

Accepted Manuscripts

This is the version of your work that has been through peer review with revisions made. It has not yet been typeset by the publisher. It will likely be a word document. Publishers' copyright policy often states you are permitted to share these versions publicly subject to an embargo period.

You can check your publisher's embargo period for your journal using JISC's Open Policy Finder tool: https://openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk/  or contact the Library with any queries: openresearch@plymouth.ac.uk or your Information Specialist.

If your publisher requires an embargo you can select the date on which the remaining embargo period expires within the deposit workflow in Pure.  Remember that the embargo applies from the date of publication of the article, not your thesis deposit.  Depending on when your paper was published, the embargo may already have elapsed.

Please contact your Information Specialist in the Library with any questions about Accepted Manuscripts (informationspecialists@plymouth.ac.uk).

Commercial/Patent sensitivity

This is a common reason for requiring an embargo e.g. signing a confidentiality agreement with an industrial partner.  You can select a date up to 1 year in the future via the deposit workflow in Pure.  If you require a longer period, please see the 'extended embargos' tab for more information.

Ethical or personal data concerns

A temporary embargo is unlikely to be a good fit for these scenarios.  Typical scenarios may be:

• Your thesis contains some information that should not be public but if this material were to be redacted, the thesis would still be a coherent whole and able to be made publicly available.  In which case, follow the instructions in this guide for Depositing the Full or Full and Edited versions of your thesis.  (An example may be locations of endangered species).
   
• Your thesis contains information weaved throughout the document and would not be readable if this were possible to redact.  In which case, consult with your DoS/Supervisor and the Doctoral College directly to determine if a permanent embargo with no edited version available would be possible following deposit via Pure.  This is a very rare scenario and the permanent embargo would need to be applied in the system by the Doctoral College. 

Extended embargos

In rare cases, there may be a requirement to extend an embargo beyond 1 year.  This would require DoS approval before application.  If you feel this applies to your work, please deposit as usual, selecting an embargo date of 1 year in the future.  When you have DoS/supervisor approval, complete the following form and forward emailed approval from your DoS to the address given in the form:

• Extended embargo approval confirmation

Your extended embargo period will be applied once your thesis deposit has been approved by the Doctoral College.