Category talk:Transcript certificates
Add topicCan I publish my own university transcripts on Wikimedia Commons
[edit]Dear Wikimedia Commons experts,
Can I publish one document on Wikimedia Commons with all my university transcripts? I have already redacted my personal information.
This is a compilation from public universities (Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium).
A university transcript is typically considered a mostly factual/administrative document. It contains information such as: course names, grades and dates. In many jurisdictions, simple factual records either:
- have very weak copyright protection, or
- are not copyrightable at all because they lack sufficient creativity.
As such, a university transcript usually has little or no copyrightable creativity because it is mostly factual data and standard formatting. Therefor I would argue that many transcripts may effectively fall below the copyright threshold, especially simple administrative layouts.
Provided I:
- ensure I do not expose sensitive information about other people (further redaction of other people's signatures and/or even the signees' names), and
- redact any elements that would meet the threshold for sufficient creativity, such as: logos, layout/design, seals.
I have made all redactions using LaTeX black fills, and have hard-baked them (rasterized using Ghostscript) such that underlying information can not be recovered. Finally, I have mentioned in the document that this is a public version containing redactions.
Would this be acceptable?
Kind regards, Vincent Mia Edie Verheyen (talk) 10:08, 15 May 2026 (UTC)
- See discussion in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Can_I_publish_my_own_university_transcripts_on_Wikimedia_Commons Vincent Mia Edie Verheyen (talk) 19:43, 15 May 2026 (UTC)
- Note that following this discussion, and prior to upload, I have also removed almost all full sentences from the original transcripts, in order to ensure that they stayed below the treshold for copyright protection. Vincent Mia Edie Verheyen (talk) 08:08, 16 May 2026 (UTC)