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Aalto University Library, Otaniemi
Individual articles
The individual articles (publications) included in a compound dissertation should be available for readers as full-text, not only in printed form but also as pdf files on the web page of the electronic version of the dissertation. This is not allowed without permissions from the copyright holders of the articles.
If the doctoral student owns the copyright of the article, it can be included in the dissertation, weather it is in printed or in electronic form. However, the individual articles are often such that their copyrights have been transferred, in most cases, to publishers of scientific journals. The doctoral students are responsible for contacting the copyright holders and obtaining the necessary permissions. Note that this process may take several weeks! You may contact the publishers with the help of a sample letter below (the text can be used as such or edited according to one's own needs).
Send the permissions / answers you have received from the publishers to the Aalto University Otaniemi Campus Library, either by e-mail to the address diss-otaniemi [at] aalto [dot] fi or as paper copies by post to the address Aalto University Library / Otaniemi / Diss / P.O.Box 17000 / 00076 Aalto. The answer of a publisher should be sent to the library also in the case it is negative. If you own the copyright of an individual article, please, send also this information to the library, preferably by e-mail.
The publishers almost always give permission to include an individual article in a printed dissertation. Often information on this can be found from the web pages of the publisher. The practices might, however, be stricter concerning the electronic dissertation, because the article will be available on Aalto University server in open Internet. If the publisher does not grant the permission for the electronic version, only the publication information (bibliographic information) of the article is displayed on the web page of the dissertation.
Sample permission letter
Dear Sir/Madam (or Mr/Ms and surname of the person, if known)
In Finland a PhD-thesis most often consists of an overview (about 30-50 pages long) and several articles published in scientific journals (usually 6 articles).
In my PhD-thesis the articles published by [publisher] are:
Bibliographic information of the articles
I am cordially requesting your permission to include the articles (above) in the printed version [print run] of my thesis and also exhibit them in the internet as PDF-files on the www-page of our university library and store them on the university server as part of my electronic thesis.
I would greatly appreciate a reply by [public display time] at the latest.
Looking forward to your favourable reply I remain.
Yours sincerely
Name and contact information of the doctoral student