Thesis and Copyright
Copyright
As the author and therefore the creator of the doctoral thesis which, from a purely legal viewpoint is regarded as a "personal intellectual creation" (§ 2 Paragraph 2 German Copyright Act), the PhD candidate owns copyright on the text. Publication, irrespective of whether by a publisher or on the Internet, does not alter this basic fact. Copyright applies even after death; it protects the text for up to 70 years after the author's death.
Copyright covers a whole raft of rights. When publishing a dissertation, the following copyright aspects play a crucial role: the right to reproduction (§ 16 Copyright Act) including the right to disseminate (§ 17 Copyright Act), the right to exhibit, present and broadcast and also the right to make texts available via the Internet (§ 19a Copyright Act).
The curriculum vitae of the PhD candidate constitutes part of the dissertation, meaning that the Data Protection Act also needs to be taken into consideration in the electronic version, as personal data is saved and circulated. For this reason (and for actual publication of the work), the university libraries require a declaration of consent from the PhD candidate.
Publication of the dissertation on university servers and by a publisher
Publication of a doctoral thesis on the Net, i.e. electronic publication, does not mean that the work can no longer be published by a publisher. In order to keep all their options open, PhD candidates should take great care over the contracts they sign with the university library and with publishers who are to publish the printed or other version of the dissertation.
If, besides the online version on the university servers, the PhD candidate is interested in having the work released by a publisher, s/he must draw attention to the existing online version of the work on the university server during the contract negotiations, and, if necessary, delete the clause referring to exclusive dissemination rights in the contract with the publisher.
The university library functions here as a kind of "publisher" in the online publication of doctoral theses. The PhD candidate must therefore transfer rights to the university in any contract (in particular the rights regarding making the text available via the Internet and creating the necessary digital copies). Normally, in a contract with the university library, you grant the library a non-exclusive right to use the text via the Internet and Intranet. If the publisher is granted comprehensive usage rights, including Internet usage, this could restrict publication on a university server.
Implications for contract negotiations with a publisher
When negotiating a contract with a publisher, the PhD candidate should ensure that s/he does not transfer "exclusive" or "sole" rights to the publishing house. Otherwise a publisher can insist that any thesis he publishes may not be published by anyone else on the Internet. This would exclude the possibility of additionally publishing the thesis as an online publication by the university, or, if it has already been published on a university server, result in its having to be removed.
For this reason, the author should retain the right to free online publication on university and library servers in the publication contract. "Free" here means firstly that the publisher may not impose charges upon the doctorate student if s/he wishes to publish the work online, including on other servers, and secondly that access to the online publication should be free of charge for readers and users. An appropriately formulated sample contract between the author (PhD candidate) and the publisher can be found in sample Author - Publisher contract (available only in German).
The contractual conditions contained in the sample contract do not constitute specifically applicable legal advice for the legal transaction. The individual clauses are intended to serve as a checklist for the legal issues to be taken into consideration, possibly as a wording suggestion for a publication contract which would need to be adjusted to take the particular features and individual requirements of the contract parties into account.
German Copyright Act (available only in German)
(Retrieved from "http://www.dissonline.de/eng/recht/urheberrecht.htm")
The www.dissonline.de information system provides a wide range of information on the electronic publishing of dissertations and post-doctoral theses. Information is held which is of relevance for authors, libraries, scientific institutions and publishing houses.
Sample documents are available which are intended to help authors with the presentation of their dissertations or post-doctoral theses, allowing them to be published electronically on university publication servers and by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek while fulfilling all digital preservation requirements. Furthermore, it is also possible to use www.dissonline.de to carry out research directly in electronic university publications held by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
rss
DissOnline
Top
Print