How does copyright and plagiarism apply to sellers on Stuvia?

Copyright

If you have made the document yourself: copyright will apply. Copyright gives you assurance that it is your work, this means that no one is legally allowed to copy your work. Only you have the right to distribute your copyrighted work. 

For users of Stuvia, this means that you are only allowed to upload and distribute documents if you are the copyright holder. When uploading your own document, you hold all the rights to that document. Users that upload their documents always stay copyright holder and never give away their rights by using Stuvia. 

Sellers on Stuvia are free to adjust, delete, share for free or choose to sell their documents. 

Note: By selling documents on Stuvia, users will not sell their copyright, this means that the seller of the document stays copyright holder. The buyer is only allowed to use the document for personal use, and Stuvia is not accountable for any documents uploaded to the Stuvia platform.

Plagiarism
As soon as you copy from someone else, without referring to the original document and writer, this can be seen as plagiarism. Plagiarism is strictly illegal.

If you upload documents to Stuvia that are based on copyrighted work, be sure that you state in the document from which document it is based on. Referencing or quoting is allowed, describe where you got it from and who the author(s) are. Moreover, summarizing a book or a scientific article will not cause any problems, as long as the summary is your 'own work'. This means: the work has to be written in your own words, and you have quoted the right way. 

For more information on copyright or plagiarism, see our Copyright Center.