This is an automatic translation generated by artificial intelligence. May contain errors.
At Rey Juan Carlos University, theses submitted to the International Doctoral School must be published in open access in the University’s Open Archive (BURJC Digital):
“In accordance with Royal Decree 576/2023, once doctoral thesis has been approved (i.e., defended and favorably graded), the university will handle the archiving of doctoral thesis in open electronic format in URJC’s institutional repository. This implies the open-access publication of doctoral thesis.” Art. 35, Regulations for Doctoral Studies at URJC approved by the Governing Council on 19 July 2024
In addition to publishing your doctoral thesis in open access, you can also publish data and other materials related to it, including computer programs you have created (in this case, releasing them as free software). Once it has been published in open access, your thesis will appear as part of the University’s thesis collection.
How to publish your thesis in open access
To publish your thesis manuscript in open access, you must follow these steps:
- Check that everything in your manuscript has been produced by you, or that you have permission to publish in open access any third-party elements you may have used.
- Choose the distribution license for your manuscript from among those considered open access.
- Mark the manuscript with the chosen license.
In this way, when the manuscript is deposited in the University’s Open Archive, it will be published in open access under the license you have chosen.
Let’s look at these steps in more detail.
Checking ownership and permissions
The content of the manuscript will generally belong to whoever created it. However, sometimes elements from third parties are used. Therefore, before publishing the manuscript (whether or not it is to be released in open access), it is important to ensure that all content is ours or that we have permission to publish it under the chosen license.
If elements included without permission are detected, it is advisable to remove or replace them before submitting the manuscript, or, if possible, to obtain permission from their author to include them. If permission is obtained from the author, they may be included, always stating the authorship, properly citing the original work, and, if applicable, mentioning the conditions under which permission was granted.
Special mention should be made of elements under a free license. When this occurs, they may be included in the manuscript, always citing the original element and its authorship appropriately.
Also bear in mind that for excerpts from third-party works that should be cited for academic reasons, you may be able to rely on the right of quotation.
The inclusion in one’s own work of excerpts from other written, sound or audiovisual works, as well as isolated works of a plastic or figurative photographic nature, is lawful provided that they are works already disclosed and their inclusion is made by way of quotation or for analysis, commentary or critical judgment. Such use may only be carried out for teaching or research purposes, to the extent justified by the purpose of such inclusion and indicating the source and the name of the author of the work used.
Consolidated Text of the Intellectual Property Law, Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996, of 12 April (Article 32: Quotations and reviews and illustration for educational or scientific research purposes, Section 1)
Also bear in mind that there may be academic reasons why it may not be appropriate to include certain third-party works in your manuscript, and that there may be conventions on how to include and cite them that you should be aware of. If you have any doubts, consult your thesis supervisor or the coordinator of your doctoral program.
Once you have completed this step, you will have a manuscript ready for publication, as it will include only your own work and work that you have permission to include.
Choosing a license
The next step to publish your thesis in open access is to choose the license under which you will publish it, from among those recognized as “open access” by the University’s Open Publishing Council.
The person who created a work originally holds all rights to it by virtue of having created it. Whoever receives that work can only exercise the rights granted by its creator. The recipient cannot reproduce, redistribute, include it in a compilation, or create a derivative work (such as an update or translation), for example, unless they obtain permission from the author.
In the case of open-access publication, the license is the text that indicates what permissions you are granting to the recipient of your work automatically and without the need for specific permission. In general, these permissions will include those detailed in the most common definitions of open-access publication. For example, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access states that for a work to be considered published in open access:
“The author(s) […] must guarantee the free, irrevocable and worldwide right to access the work, and license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and publicly display it, and to make and distribute derivative works […]”
Berlin Declaration on Open Access, 22 October 2003
URJC Open Publishing Council has recognized the following as open-access licenses (which comply with the most common definitions of open access):
- Creative Commons Attribution. In summary, this license allows sharing (copying and redistributing the work in any medium and format) and adapting (remixing, transforming and building upon the material for any purpose, even commercially) the work, provided it is properly attributed (credit is given appropriately, including a link to the license, and indicating if changes were made to the work).
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. In summary, this license allows the same as the above, with the same attribution condition, but also including the “ShareAlike” condition (if you remix, transform or create from the work, you must distribute the new work under the same original license).
In other words, whoever receives a work under a “CC Attribution” license can create derivative works and distribute them under any license they wish, including traditional “all rights reserved” licenses, whereas if they receive it under “CC Attribution-ShareAlike” they can also create derivative works, but can only distribute them under the “CC Attribution-ShareAlike” license. In other respects, both licenses work in the same way (in both cases the works can be copied and redistributed, for example). In both cases, the authorship of the original work must be acknowledged.
Once you have chosen the license, you will have what you need to move on to the next step.
Marking with the chosen license
Once we know which license we are going to use, we have to mark the manuscript with that license. To do this, we will include in the manuscript a text similar to the following:
©2024 Authora Mengánez Zutánez
Some rights reserved
This document is distributed under the
“Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International” license of Creative Commons,
available at
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.es
Normally, this text is placed on one of the first pages of the manuscript, in the same place where the copyright notice and “All rights reserved” are usually found in books. The year is the year of publication, and “Authora Mengánez Zutánez” would be the name of the person who authored the thesis manuscript. Naturally, the license reference will be to the one chosen in the previous step.
The thesis manuscript that is deposited with the Doctoral School to begin the procedures leading to its submission (normally in PDF format) should already be marked in this way.
And with this we will be ready for the final step.
Publication
The process ends with the publication of the manuscript. This publication takes place in BURJC Digital, where it is deposited by the International Doctoral School shortly after the thesis has been presented and positively evaluated by the committee.
What happens next
Publication in the Open Archive will provide a unique address (“handle,” which is a unique identifier, usually represented by a URL or hyperlink) for the manuscript, which will be preserved by the University Library. In addition, that address, together with the manuscript’s metadata (title, authorship, abstract, etc.) will be passed on to electronic bibliographic indexes, so that it can be located by bibliographic search engines and also by general search engines.
With this, the thesis manuscript (and, if applicable, the materials deposited with it) will become part of the universal body of knowledge published in open access and will be available to all humanity.