You may need or want to re-use work of others such as quotes, graphs, tables and illustrations in your own works. This guide explains:

• when you need to seek permission
• how to request permission
• what to do if you are unable to get permission
• what to do when you have been given permission

This guide is for Charles Sturt staff and students planning to reproduce or adapt third party copyright material. External parties wanting permission to use Charles Sturt copyright material should contact copyright@csu.edu.au.

You need to request permission if you reuse a substantial portion of a copyright “all rights reserved” work in:

•  your thesis (uploaded to CRO for open access)
• a journal article submitted for publication
• open educational resources (OER)
• any other public access use such as a book chapter, online report, blog, website or multimedia project
• any other way that is not covered by a licence or exception in the Copyright Act.

Substantial may not be a big part. It just needs to be a significant and important or distinctive part. Images, graphs and tables in academic publications are usually considered substantial parts. Abstracts or publisher summaries are considered to be works in their own right and therefore substantial. Key findings or conclusions from a research article are important.

If you have assigned copyright or agreed to an exclusive licence with a publisher you may need permission from them to reproduce you own work in another publication or thesis.

The University owns copyright in works produced by staff during the course of their employment. You may need permission from the delegate to reproduce teaching materials or other works in external publications.

Responses to permission requests can be almost immediate, but may also take weeks or months.

To avoid delays in your thesis or publication submission, start contacting copyright holders as soon as you identify material you hope to reuse. Sometimes tracing and contacting copyright owners can be difficult and time-consuming or you may need to find alternative material to reuse.

Permission is not required if:

• The material is in the public domain.
• You are using works under a Creative Commons licence and complying with the licence terms.
• The work is from a website with terms and conditions that allow reuse. 
• You are using the work for teaching in accordance with the conditions of the statutory education licence and the copy is only accessible within the Charles Sturt network.
• Your use is considered fair dealing under the Copyright Act.

NOTE: Fair dealing covers the use of copyright material in a thesis submitted for examination, but does not extend to publishing a thesis on CRO.