Copyright law does allow referenced quotation of other people's work. If you have used 3rd party copyright material you should usually be able to rely on one of the 'fair dealing' exceptions such as illustration for instruction, or criticism, review or quotation to include this material for the purpose of examination. Remember the use must be fair.
The fair dealing exclusions may also cover the use of very small amounts of 3rd party copyright material in the e-thesis but our advice, and best practice, is to contact the rights holder to ask for permission to include the material in your e-thesis. Remember if a copyright owner challenged the use of their material in your e-thesis you would need to be confident that you could defend its inclusion using one of the copyright exceptions if you have not obtained their written consent.
Obtaining permission to use 3rd party copyright content can be a lengthy process so we recommend that you start as soon as possible. If the rights holder does not reply within a reasonable length of time, you should contact them again, as you cannot interpret a lack of response as permission to go ahead. If you need advice on contacting publishers, then email repository@abertay.ac.uk and library staff will be happy to advise. You can use or adapt the suggested wording below when contacting the copyright owner for permission.
Dear Sir/Madam
I am a PhD student at Abertay University and I am contacting you to seek permission to include the following material within the electronic version of my PhD thesis:
[Provide full details of the material you intend to include]
The thesis will be deposited in the university's open access repository, https://rke.abertay.ac.uk/, which is a non-commercial repository and openly available to all. A copy of the thesis will also be available from the British Library Electronic Thesis service EThOS. A full citation will be included to acknowledge the copyright holder of the material included in the thesis.
If you are not the rights holder for this material I would be grateful if you could let me know who I should contact for permission. If you require any further information, please let me know.
Thank you for your help.
Yours faithfully
If you are unable to obtain permission to include the copyright material in your e-thesis you can choose to submit a redacted thesis with the copyright material removed to an appendix which will be embargoed. The inclusion of copyright material in your e-thesis requiring an embargo should be detailed on the Embargo Request Form (RD08) available from the research support pages. If you need to submit a redacted thesis to Abertay's Open Access repository, email repository@abertay.ac.uk for advice.
Students are never expected to pay fees requested by copyright owners to include 3rd party copyright material in their e-thesis.