Automatic Publication of TFG in Open Access from June 13, 2023! Infographic summary | Video summary
At Rey Juan Carlos University, students who complete a Final Degree Project (TFG) can decide to publish it in open access in the University’s Open Archive (BURJC Digital).
“The TFG will be deposited in the University’s digital resource platform for conservation and institutional archiving purposes. The authors may authorize the open access publication of the work, provided it does not contain confidential information (existence of confidentiality agreements with companies, possibility of generating patents, etc.). In these cases, the University may request an alternative document from the author without the potentially confidential information.”
TFG Regulation, art 4.5 (May 26, 2023)
You can publish your TFG memory in open access, as well as data and other materials related to it, including computer programs you have created (in this case, publishing it as free software). If you decide to publish your TFG in open access, it will appear as part of the University’s TFG collection (https://burjcdigital.urjc.es/handle/10115/19269).
How to Publish Your TFG in Open Access
If you decide to publish your TFG memory in open access, you will need to follow these steps:
- Check that everything in your memory has been done by you, or that you have permission to publish third-party elements you may have used.
- Choose the distribution license for your memory, among those considered open access.
- Mark the memory with the chosen license.
- Publish the memory in the University’s Open Archive. From June 13, 2023, this is an automatic process, which is done when uploading the memory to the TFG platform.
Let’s take a closer look at these steps.
Checking Ownership and Permissions
The content of the TFG memory will generally belong to the person who created it. However, sometimes third-party elements are used. Therefore, before publishing the memory (whether in open access or not), it is essential to ensure that all content is yours or that you have permission to publish it under the chosen license.
If elements are detected that have been included without permission, it is advisable to remove them, or replace them, before submitting the thesis, or, if possible, obtain permission from the author to include them. If permission is obtained from the author, they may be included, always acknowledging authorship, properly citing the original work, and if applicable mentioning the conditions under which permission was obtained.
Special mention should be made of elements that have a free license. When this occurs, they may be included in the thesis, always properly citing the original element and its authorship.
Additionally, keep in mind that for fragments of others’ works that need to be cited for academic reasons, you may be able to invoke the right of quotation.
The inclusion in one’s own work of fragments of others’ works of written, sound or audiovisual nature, as well as isolated works of plastic or figurative photographic art, is lawful provided they are already disclosed works and their inclusion is done for quotation or for analysis, commentary or critical judgment. Such use may only be made for teaching or research purposes, to the extent justified by the purpose of such incorporation and indicating the source and name of the author of the work used.
Consolidated Text of the Intellectual Property Law, Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996, of April 12 (Article 32: Quotations and reviews and illustration for educational or scientific research purposes, Section 1)
Also consider that there may be academic reasons why it may not be appropriate to include certain third-party works in your thesis, and that there may be certain conventions about how to include them and how to cite them that you should know. If you have any doubts, consult with your thesis advisor, or with the thesis coordinator in your degree program.
When you have completed this step, you will have a thesis that will be ready to publish, as it will include only your own work and work with permission to be included.
Choosing a License
The next step to publish your thesis in open access will be to choose the license under which you will publish it, among those recognized as “open access” by the Open Publishing Council of the University.
The author, by virtue of being the author of their work, has originally all rights over it. Whoever receives that work can only exercise the rights that the author has granted. The recipient of the work cannot reproduce it, nor redistribute it, nor include it in a compilation, nor 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 whoever receives your work, automatically and without them having to ask you for specific permission. Generally, 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) […] should grant to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works […]”
Berlin Declaration on Open Access, October 22, 2003
The Open Publishing Council of URJC 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 or format), and adapting (remixing, transforming and building upon the material for any purpose, even commercially) the work, provided proper attribution is given (appropriate credit is provided, 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 above, with the same attribution requirement, but additionally including the “ShareAlike” condition (if you remix, transform, or build upon the work, you must distribute the new work under the same original license).
In other words, someone who receives a work with an “CC Attribution” license can create derivative works, and distribute these works with any license they want, including traditional “all rights reserved” licenses, while if they receive it with “CC Attribution-ShareAlike” they can also create derivative works, but can only distribute them also under “CC Attribution-ShareAlike” license. In other aspects, both licenses work 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.
When 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 will use, we need to mark the thesis with that license. For this, we will include in the thesis text similar to this:
©2021 Author Mengánez Zutánez
Some rights reserved.
This document is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, 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 thesis, in the same place where books usually have the copyright notice and “All rights reserved”. The year is the publication year, and “Author Mengánez Zutánez” would be the name of the thesis author. Naturally, the license reference will be to the one chosen in the previous step.
It is recommended that the thesis deposited in the thesis platform (normally in PDF format) already includes this marking.
And with this we will be ready for the final step.
Publication
The process ends with the publication of the thesis. Since June 12, 2023, the thesis platform has been automatically connected with the University’s Open Archive. Therefore, when depositing the thesis in the thesis platform, the chosen license will be indicated through a form, and the deposit in the Open Archive will be done automatically, with that license, once the thesis has been positively evaluated.
What Happens Next
Publication in the open archive will provide a unique address (“handle”, which is a unique identifier, normally represented by a url or hyperlink) for the thesis, which will be preserved by the University Library. Additionally, this address, along with the thesis metadata (title, authorship, abstract, etc.) will be included in bibliographic electronic indexes, so it can be located by bibliographic search engines, and also general search engines.
With this, the thesis (and the materials deposited with it) will become part of the universal knowledge published in open access, and will be available to all humanity.