Copyright law comes into play at several stages of research and thesis/dissertation writing for graduate students. Please visit the MSU Office of Copyright and Copyright for Graduate Students websites for additional information and resources.
When creating your ProQuest account, you will have the following Creative Commons Licensing Options to choose from:
- No Creative Commons License
- Attribution: Allows others to distribute, remix, tweak and build upon your work, even commercially as long as they credit you for original creation. This is the most accommodating of the licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissipation and use of licensed materials.
- Attribution-NoDerivs: This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareALike: Allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.
- Attribution-ShareALike: Allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open-source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so all derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
- Attribution-Noncommercial: Allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others if they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
For copyright questions, please reach out to Susan Kendall, Copyright Librarian.