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Student works

As the creator, you usually have the copyright
Publicly disclosing your work
What if the course's organisers are asking you to publicly disclose your work?
What else to look out for
E-learnings copyright

Below you will find an explanation of the most important copyright issues you may encounter when writing your thesis or creating another (graduation) project. Examples are software source code, construction drawings, design products, films and dance performances.

As the creator, you usually have the copyright

You are the creator of your thesis or other (graduation) project, so you own the copyright, unless this has been otherwise arranged. For example, if your work placement company gives you a research assignment. You don't need to do anything to protect your work under copyright law. If you are creating a work together with others, you share this copyright.

You may also deal with the copyrights of others during the creation of your work, for example when you are using texts or images created by others for your graduation project.

Publicly disclosing your work

In principle, you as the creator decide whether or not you want to publicly disclose your work. However, if you were doing a work placement while you were writing your thesis, it makes sense to make clear arrangements with the work placement company about your thesis's publication, distribution and use. For example, can the work be published in Open Access (with a Creative Commons licence)? You remain the copyright owner, but it is important to take into account the wishes of those you collaborated with. This also applies if you have written or created your thesis or work together with others.

What if the course's organisers are asking you to publicly disclose your work?

Almost all Dutch universities of applied sciences and research universities have a repository. You can post and publish your (graduation) project there. Doing this makes your work visible worldwide, for example via Google Scholar. The policy for this varies from institution to institution. There may also be different policies for each faculty.

If you are a student at a university of applied sciences and you want to publish your thesis, you can do this in the HBO Kennisbank. It contains more than 50,000 thesis, articles and other publications by lecturers, lecturer-researchers and fellow students of universities of applied sciences. The library can tell you how to upload and make your own work available via this portal. Students at a research university can contact their tutor with any questions about public disclosure.

What else to look out for

If you want to publish your thesis or other work, be very careful with confidential information and personal data. Make sure you don't mention any full names, phone numbers or email addresses of yourself and others. It is wise to omit this type of data completely in the version you want to publish. Please also be careful with the personal data of interviewees and company data.