Welcome to the Copyright and Your Thesis or Dissertation guide from Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright at the Penn State Libraries. This guide addresses copyright questions specific to Penn State thesis and dissertation authors. It covers the following topics:

• Using Others' Work
• Reusing Your Published Work
• Your Copyright
• Publishing Your Thesis or Dissertation
• FAQ and Resources

Your committee, advisors, and other mentors in your field can help you understand your field’s publishing norms, such as how to select and assess third party material and how to attribute that material properly.

The Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright provides education and services to the university community. Topics we can help with include:

• Copyright and fair use for research and teaching
• Author’s rights and publication agreements
• Open access and public access to research
• Creative Commons licenses
• Penn State’s Researcher Metadata Database

Contact us with your questions and requests for customized workshops for University groups or book an appointment with a member of our office.

This guide is based in part on Copyright for Dissertations, a guide from the University of Michigan Library Copyright Office, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.