[digital-copyright] Survey copyright question

["Marvin, Stephen" <SMarvin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Sue,
Especially pleased to reply to your concern on this specific topic.

Under Fair Use, the affect on the Market/sales of these instruments would be
decidedly detrimental and should be excluded.
Some time and preparation plus testing is applied to developing surveys and
shouldn't be taken for granted.

My story goes beyond this.  Hence the reply.
A student used a copy of a survey instrument rather than pay the $1 per copy
for about 300 participants.
The study had been conducted by a faculty member for their own research and
other students in the past.
Faculty was very surprised at the results from the survey.
Survey used an electronic scoring device to tally and evaluate the results.
However, since it was a copy of the survey, the survey was reverse of its
normal format when scanned.
Hence the results were totally askew.  The survey had to be redone.  The
student couldn't complete the assignment and had to redo the class.

Whether there are indications, it is protected by copyright.

Now, reading more closely to your question, perhaps I misunderstood the survey
/ questionnaires were developed by the student?
Then the survey/questionnaire could potentially be a marketable product.

Also Thesis material (digitized) is including video, music, software, linked
social media and some provide introductory webcast by the faculty supervising
the thesis

Hope this helps,
Stephen


Hello all.

We have graduate students (usually in Education and Counseling) who include
copies of surveys and questionnaires they use in their research when
submitting their work to our digital repository. Some of these instruments
clearly indicate their copyright status while others don't have any copyright
statement at all. Some appear to still be in circulation but others appear to
be "orphan works" -- especially when the questionnaire is included in an older
thesis.

There are times when a reader would need to see the entire questionnaire to
make sense of the thesis, but some theses might be able to stand alone without
including the entire questionnaire.

Do you have some words of wisdom for me when it comes to including (possibly)
copyrighted questionnaires and surveys in electronic theses and
dissertations?

Thanks,
Sue

________________________________
Sue Kunda
Digital Scholarship Librarian
OSU Libraries & Press
121 The Valley Library
Corvallis, OR  97331
sue.kunda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
541-737-7262