Guidelines for E-Resources Access of BBKKRC  

BBK KRC Guidelines for use of accessing  e-resources

License Agreements and Guidelines for Fair Use

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 Consortium on behalf of its member universities. 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:

• Systematic or programmatic downloading, retention, and printing are prohibited. For example, a user cannot download entire issue of a journal or print out several copies of the same article.
• Electronic distribution of content is also restricted although the specific restrictions vary from publisher to publisher. It may be permissible to forward an article to another colleague in the same institution by email, however, transmitting an article to someone outside of the institution, or to a large group of recipients, a mailing list, or an electronic bulletin board, is not allowed.
• Faculty in a university can print out a copy of an article from an electronic journal and include it in their course pack. However, multiple copies should not be made for circulation. Copyright laws protect published material in any format so that it cannot be copied except in accordance with fair use. Providing access to material for educational purposes falls within the realm of fair use.
• Subscribed e-resource should be used for educational and research purposes and not for commercial purposes.
• Providing electronic links to the licensed resources on the course web pages is permitted but it is not permissible to posted a PDF of an article on a website. However, a researcher can post a pre-print of an article written by himself.
• As with any kind of scholarly communication, a researcher can use phrases or quotes from other articles and cite the source of information. However, a researcher is prohibited from using large chunk of information (paras and chapters) from an article or from a chapter in a book.

1. What Happens if the Terms and Conditions of License Agreements are Violated?

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 license 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.

There are innumerable number of Internet resources available on the Internet on various subjects. These resources could be websites, archives of working papers/preprints/journal articles, E-prints, directories, etc. Please use the following links to get access to these resources.