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From The Libraries
[MIT Libraries Digital Resources Acquisition Librarian Ellen Finnie Duranceau discusses potential violations of license agreements.]
What do these situations have in common?
What these activities share is that they fall outside the bounds of the use contracted for when the MIT Libraries signed a license to gain campus-wide access to the databases or ejournals involved. These databases and ejournals are listed in the Libraries' access tool Vera (http://libraries.mit.edu/vera), and include products like Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/lexis-nexis) and SciFinder Scholar (http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/cheatsheets/sci-finder/) as well as ejournals like those found at the JSTOR site (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/jstor), or at the American Institute of Physics' site (http://www.aip.org/ojs/entry.html).
To offer these databases and ejournals here at MIT, we must sign a license agreement that specifies terms of use; although we try to negotiate licenses that cover normal scholarly activities and that approximate the concept of "Fair Use" under U.S. copyright law, the licenses' terms trump copyright. The terms of the license, not copyright law, determine how these products may be used. While terms of use may vary depending on our negotiation, in general they specify that electronic journals and databases be only for individual, noncommercial use without systematically downloading, distributing, or retaining substantial portions of information. The use of software such as scripts, agents, or robots, is implicitly prohibited.
It is important to be aware of these terms, since misuse jeopardizes access to the content for the entire campus, and could result in legal action. Most information providers now have controls on their servers that monitor unusual use, and some have provisions that automatically shut access down when such misuse occurs.
What recourse, then, do you have if your research project requires searching or downloading that falls outside the bounds of what is allowed under the license terms? If this is the case, you can contact the Libraries' licensing specialist, Ellen Duranceau (efinnie@mit.edu; x3-7562) who can advise you about your options. While we cannot guarantee that every request will end in a positive result, we have had success acting as a liaison with information providers to achieve several different solutions to such research needs.
So far, we have been able to manage every case of misuse, including those summarized above, so that any suspension of access to MIT was only temporary and we have been able to find alternative paths for innovative fulltext research to take place. Our ability to continue to do so depends on the responsible use of these products by all faculty, students, and researchers, and we appreciate your cooperation.
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