Students or researchers are able to rely upon using a reasonable portion of copyright works for research purposes.

The Copyright Act states that a reasonable portion under the fair dealing provisions is 10% or one chapter of a book, or one article from an issue of a journal.

If the material you want to reproduce is in digital format, then you can copy 10% of the number of words or one chapter if the work is clearly divided into chapters. For artistic works, film/video, and sound recordings there is no simple rule as to how much you can copy for research and study purposes.

As a closed provision, the research and study provision can only be relied on while enrolled as a student or undertaking research. Once your research or studies have been completed, you will need permission for any copyright works if the research output is published publicly.

For presentations such as at the Practice-Based Symposium (PRS), the research and study fair dealing provision can be relied on. For abstracts and images to be included on the PRS website or other publications related to the PRS, an intellectual property (IP) consent form will need to be completed. A reminder to complete the attribution/credit section.     

Can you include images, figures, diagrams, photographs, journal articles & conference papers in your thesis - YES. 

The copyright act has fair dealing provisions that allow students to include copyright works into theses for research and study purposes that include research and examination.

Do you need permission to include copyright works into your thesis for examination – NO.

You need permission to use copyright works in your thesis if it is published or used outside of research and study purposes. This includes publishing via the RMIT Research Repository, publishing a chapter as a journal article or chapter, presentation at a conference that is published or presented publicly.

When publishing the final archive copy of your thesis you have two options with regard to images, figures, diagrams, photographs, journal articles & conference papers:

1. Remove them and place reference statements in their place

2. Gain permission for the works to be included in your thesis to be published via the Research Repository.

The following text can be used as an image placeholder when removing images due to copyright restrictions. Don't forget to include the citation under the image so others can source the image if needed.  

<Image removed due to copyright restrictions>

Check out this 2017 presentation (40 mins) on copyright.