Copying for research

During the planning, designing, analysing and writing phases of research, you can rely on the ‘fair dealing for research and study exception’ in the Copyright Act to make copies of third-party material without permission. During the publication and dissemination phases of research you will need a licence or permission to include third party material in research outputs.

Fair dealing

As a general guide the following are examples of acceptable use under fair dealing for research:

• Keeping copies of articles in an Endnote library
• Sharing copies of articles or Endnote library with your research team
• Sharing an article obtained through interlibrary loan with your research team
• Scanning a hard copy journal article
• Including a third party figure or table in your thesis for examination
• Including a short quote or insubstantial portion of text in your publication

The following examples would not be considered fair dealing for research and you would need to find openly licenced material or get permission from the copyright owner.

• Including a third party figure or table or substantial portion of text:
  • in your thesis for open access on CRO
  • in an article for publication in a journal
  • in a conference presentation
• Uploading a copy of an article obtained through interlibrary loan or from a library subscription database onto a website or social media channel, blog or discussion board. Note: sharing a link to a ‘free to read’ open access article is fine, but uploading a copy is not ok.

Read Copyright for students for more information about using third party works in research and study and for limits under fair dealing.