Copyright Policy

1. Copyright Ownership

In accordance with applicable intellectual property legislation, copyright in works deposited in the WBU Scholarly Repository ordinarily vests in the author(s) of those works at the time of creation. World Bridge University does not claim ownership of copyright in student theses, dissertations, or other scholarly works authored by members of the university community, except where a specific contractual or employment arrangement expressly provides otherwise.

2. Licence Granted to the University

By depositing a work in the WBU Scholarly Repository, the depositor grants to World Bridge University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to:

• Reproduce, store, and preserve the work in the Repository for the purpose of digital preservation
• Make the work publicly accessible via the Repository and any federated index or harvest service with which the Repository participates
• Convert the work to any format required for preservation or accessibility purposes
• Publish metadata describing the work in open-access bibliographic databases and search engines

This licence does not transfer copyright ownership and does not restrict the author from re-using, republishing, or licensing the work elsewhere.

3. Author Rights and Obligations

Depositing authors retain the right to:

• Assert moral rights of authorship in the work
• Publish the work or a version thereof in other venues, subject to any prior agreement with a publisher
• Use the work for teaching, lecture, and conference presentation purposes
• Request reasonable modifications to the Repository record

Authors are solely responsible for ensuring that they hold the necessary rights to deposit the work and that any third-party content included in the work (including tables, figures, and quotations) is used in accordance with applicable copyright law or appropriate permissions.

4. Third-Party Copyright Material

Where a deposited work incorporates third-party material, the depositing author must have obtained all necessary licences or permissions for the inclusion of such material in an open-access publication. The University accepts no liability for any infringement of third-party intellectual property rights arising from a deposit made in breach of this requirement.

5. Creative Commons Licensing

Unless an alternative licence is specified and approved by the Office of Academic Affairs at the time of deposit, all published works in the Repository are made available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Under this licence, any user may:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially

Provided that appropriate attribution is given to the original author(s), a link to the licence is provided, and any changes made are clearly indicated. Authors who require a more restrictive licensing arrangement must notify the Repository Administrator at the time of submission.

6. Takedown Policy

Any person who believes that content in the Repository infringes their copyright or other legal rights may submit a formal written complaint to the Office of Academic Affairs at repository@worldbridgeuniversity.edu. Upon receipt of a complaint, the University will investigate the matter and, where a prima facie case of infringement is established, will temporarily restrict public access to the relevant item pending resolution.

7. Fair Use and Educational Exceptions

Nothing in this policy is intended to limit the exercise of fair use, fair dealing, or any other statutory exception to copyright that may be available to users of the Repository under applicable law.