Doctoral theses
Public disclosure of your doctoral thesis is usually mandatory
Chapters from the doctoral thesis will be published as articles later
Chapters from the doctoral thesis have already been published as articles
The doctoral thesis is published by a publisher
Can I publicly disclose my doctoral thesis on my own website?
Copyright of images, photographs and graphics
Do you want to publish your doctoral thesis or disclose it to the public in any other way? This page explains what you need to be aware of in terms of copyright.
Public disclosure of your doctoral thesis is usually mandatory
Most universities require you to publicly disclose your doctoral thesis in the university repository. Such public disclosure is not a problem. As a doctoral student, you have full copyright of the thesis. So you have the exclusive right to publicly disclose or copy this work.
However, in some situations such disclosure may cause copyright problems, in particular when you are having (parts of) the doctoral thesis published by a publisher. Some of these situations are described below.
Chapters from the doctoral thesis will be published as articles later
Journals may not accept an offered article if the content has already been publicly disclosed. You can agree on an embargo period with the research university for the public disclosure of (part of) your doctoral thesis. If the article/chapter is accepted for publication, make sure that your thesis is disclosed to the public at a later date in the university repository.
Please note: if an article is a modification of an extract from the thesis or is based solely on facts from the thesis, the above doesn't apply.
Chapters from the doctoral thesis have already been published as articles
If a chapter of the doctoral thesis has already been published as an article, it is very likely that the copyright has been assigned to the journal's publisher. The publisher will not permit the thesis' public disclosure immediately after you get your doctorate degree, as it is not the student but the publisher who has the right to publicly disclose and copy the publication. You can then agree on an embargo period with the research university for the public disclosure of (part of) your doctoral thesis.
Please note: if an article is a modification of part of the doctoral thesis or is based solely on facts from the thesis, the above doesn't apply.
The doctoral thesis is published by a publisher
If the doctoral thesis is published by a publisher, the publisher will ask you to transfer the copyright. This gives the publisher the exclusive right to publicly disclose and reproduce the doctoral thesis. However, almost all publishers are aware of the obligation to include a digital version of the thesis in a repository. You should therefore consult with the publisher about an embargo period and inform the research university. Once the embargo expires, the research university will publicly disclose your thesis.
Can I publicly disclose my doctoral thesis on my own website?
You can publicly disclose your thesis on your personal website without any problems if you own the full copyright of the thesis. If this is not the case, for example because the publisher owns the copyrights, problems may arise, so please obtain permission in advance.
Copyright of images, photographs and graphics
If your thesis includes images, photos or graphics of others, note that you need permission from the creator just as you would for the use of text. Permission is not required when an image is used as a citation or if the image comes with a Creative Commons licence, for example.
Source referencing is always mandatory when you use images created by someone else.
If you ask for permission to use an image in your doctoral thesis, also state that you intend to disclose your thesis with a publisher, repository or your own website, for example.