Copyright at MIT: Researching and Writing/Creating

Copyright material is important in that it can help your academic reputation, future research and promotion prospects as well as help you financially.

Maintaining control over the copyright in your research material, allows you to influence these outcomes.  So ask:

• What are the copyright implications of this?

• What happens if I give my copyright to ...?

For researchers, copyright affects you in 2 areas:

• Using other people's work (third-party material) - anything used in your research may have copyright attached to it. This means you may need to check who holds the copyright, the copyright duration, whether your use of it comes under copyright exceptions or is covered by special licences or agreements, how much can be used, or whether you will need to get written permission to use it.

See Copyright Basics tab.

See also the Photocopying and Scanning and Document Delivery boxes on this page; For Students tab for further information on copying from other types resources.

• Producing your own work - whatever ideas or information you express in a material form i.e. written as text or recorded as sound or images is automatically covered by copyright as soon as the work is created. There is no need to register for copyright.

See also the Why is Copyright Important in Research? box on this page.