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Copyright for Students

Fair Dealing

The Copyright Act provides some exceptions to the rights of copyright owners allowing students to use material without permission from copyright owners as long as they comply with certain conditions. This is called Fair Dealing for research or study. It allows students to copy limited amounts of literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works as part of their study at Swinburne as long as they comply with the following conditions:

  • The purpose of your proposed use must be research or study. This would include work you are required to undertake as part of the course you are enrolled in at Swinburne.
  • The proposed use must be ‘fair’.

This is determined by taking into account the following factors:
  • The purpose and character of the dealing
  • The nature of the work or adaptation
  • The possibility of obtaining the work or adaptation within a reasonable time at an ordinary commercial price
  • The effect of the dealing upon the potential market for, or value of, the work or adaptation
  • The amount and substantiality of the part copied taken in relation to the whole work or adaptation
In most cases you can only copy a reasonable portion of a work. A reasonable portion is the whole of one or more articles from a periodical publication if they are for the same research or course of study, 10% or one chapter of a book or 10% of the number of words in an electronic copy. There are no guidelines for copying of artistic works.

These sections can also be used by staff who wish to copy material for their own research activities.

Generally the fair dealing exceptions can only be used by individuals - i.e. staff cannot use fair dealing to copy on behalf of students - and are different to the statutory licences (Part VA and Part VB) that allow the university staff to make multiple copies of material for educational purposes.There is no payment required for the use of the fair dealing exceptions.

Postgraduate Students

When researching and writing your thesis you will more than likely use other people's copyright material in your own work.

This means you should treat the process of copyright management in your thesis as part of the process of writing your thesis. This will ensure that when you are ready to submit your thesis and make it publicly available, you can be confident that your thesis complies with copyright law. If you need to ask permission to include other's work this can also take some time so it's a good idea to start that process early on. The Copyright and Your Thesis toolkit below contains useful information on copyright management when researching and writing your thesis.

Brochures

For further information contact the Copyright Office.