Article Database and Electronic Journal Copyright and Licence Guidelines
- General Guidelines
- Locating Licence Permissions for Electronic Journal Articles Used in Teaching
- Sharing Electronic Journal Articles in "Journal Clubs" and for Other Scholarly Purposes
General Guidelines
Each year, Massey University Library subscribes to thousands of electronic journals, ebooks, and article databases for a substantial cost. The legal contracts which the Library signs for each of these resources stipulate how and by whom they may be used.
All Massey staff and students should know that their use can be monitored by publishers, Massey University Library, and ITS staff. If publishers suspect their licence has been breached by anyone inside or outside the University, they have the right to suspend all University access to the resource in question. Licence violations traced back to specific users may result in the suspension of individual accounts.
Although licences vary from resource to resource, the following rules provide a summary of responsible use. It is important that you adhere to them.
In general, it is legal to:
- download and save and/or print limited portions of content; for example, one or two articles from a journal issue, or one chapter of an ebook, for personal use
- share content with other Massey University students, staff, and researchers via the distribution of article URLs
- use content for Massey University-related assignments, research, or instruction
- include links to content from secure teaching environments such as Stream
In general, it is ILLEGAL to
- share your Massey University username and password with anyone
- post content to any non-secure public space such as a web site or blog
- use content for commercial purposes, or for the benefit of any party external to Massey University
- distribute content to anyone who is not affiliated with Massey University, including non-Massey employers
- use content without citing the source
- remove or obscure copyright notices
- make mass, automated, or systematic copies of content for electronic or hard copy distribution or storage
- modify content or create derivative works (mashups)
- reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, translate the source code, or create derivative works
Locating Licence Permissions for Electronic Journal Articles Used In Teaching
Specific licence permissions and restrictions, such as whether or not a journal article PDF can be uploaded onto the Stream server, vary from publisher to publisher. The Library Catalogue lists this information for thousands of our online journals, allowing you to check specific permissions and restrictions when preparing your course material. To do this, click on the About Resource button located in many Catalogue records (click on the image below to see the full screen view):
Then click on the Usage & Licence tab (click on the image below to see the full screen view):
The permissions and restrictions are listed there. If no information is listed for your journal, please contact the Library with your article citations. We will provide you with URLs which you can use in your teaching materials to link directly to your articles.
Sharing Electronic Journal Articles in "Journal Clubs" and for Other Scholarly Purposes
When emailing an article to your colleagues, it is better to send a link to the article in question rather than emailing a PDF as an attachment. The same is true for getting together with your colleagues to discuss a journal article: please email a link to the article prior to the meeting rather than printing one copy of the article, and then making photocopies of that copy.
Linking to, rather than photocopying, the article ensures that we are within the licence parameters of every publisher, as all electronic journal publishers (except Harvard Business Review) permit this activity. Furthermore, linking to the article allows the Library to track accurate usage statistics so that we know which journals to renew, and which journals might be candidates for cancellation.
