The INFLIBNET Consortium subscribes to thousands of electronic journals including full-text electronic resources and bibliographic databases for its member institutions. All electronic resources available through the Consortium are governed by license agreements. The terms and conditions for using these resources are spelled out in license agreements that are signed with each publisher by the INFLIBNET Consortium on behalf of its member institutions. The licenses for electronic resources impose two types of restrictions on its usage, namely i) who can use these resources; and ii) how the resources can be used. The first restriction defines authorized users for e-resources, which generally includes students, faculty, staff and onsite visitors of a subscribing institution. The second restriction deals with how these resources can be used. It is the responsibility of individual users to ensure that e-resources are used for personal, educational and research purposes only. Most of the agreements entered into by the Consortium and publishers specify items that users are prohibited to do. Some of them are as follows:
Publishers track the use of their electronic resources in terms of number of downloads made by subscribing institution. Misuse, if any, is notified to the subscribing institution with details of kinds of violations and institution is expected to take action. The publisher also suspends the access to e-resource pending suitable action by subscribing institution. The access is stopped not only for journals where licence agreement was violated but for all journals by the same publisher. Moreover, the access is suspended not only for the individual violator but for the entire institution.
The Consortium subscribes to thousands of electronic journals and bibliographic databases for use by authorized users in member institutions. The terms and conditions for using these resources are spelled out in electronic resource license agreements with each publisher. It is the responsibility of individual users to ensure that the use of electronic resources does not breach the terms and conditions specified in the license agreements. Licenses vary from publisher to publisher; however, the general principles are as follows:
Permitted | Not Permitted |
---|---|
Viewing, downloading, copying, printing and saving a copy of search results | Use of robots or intelligent agents to do systematic, bulk or automatic downloading is not permitted |
Viewing, downloading, copying, printing and saving individual articles | Systematic downloading or printing of entire journal issues or volumes, or large portions of other e-resources is not permitted |
Using e-resources for scholarly, educational or scientific research, teaching, private study and clinical purposes | Using e-resources for commercial gain is not permitted (i.e. reselling, redistributing or republishing licensed content) |
Sending a copy of an article to another authorized user (i.e. current faculty, students or staff) | Transmitting, disseminating or otherwise making online content available to unauthorized users (i.e. sending to mailing lists or electronic bulletin boards) is not permitted |
Posting the URL to the publisher's version of the article on a class website (publisher links will allow only authorized users access) | Posting the publisher's version or PDF of an article to an open class website is not permitted (instead, post the URL to the article which will allow only authorized users access) |
Breaches of the license agreement with publishers could result in the suspension of access to the resources for the member institutions. Generic license agreements for all publishers specifying all the terms and conditions are given below: