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Licensed Library Resources

*November 2019

This instructional module is not intended as legal advice. All Opening Up Copyright modules are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0) International license.

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TROUBLE ACCESSING ARTICLES

Simone

Harbinger of Impending Doom

Magical Box That is Supposed to Show Her the Article

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TROUBLE ACCESSING ARTICLES

Paywall

Simone pays for these

The library pays for these

Open Access refers to free, unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books.

University

Network

“What is Open Access?” Springer Nature [website]

If the article assigned by the instructor was an open access article, there’s a good chance that Simone would have been able to read it from home without much effort. However, the majority of all academic literature is not freely available online.

Simone is likely trying to access an article that is behind a paywall. She might also access content behind a paywall when paying for music on iTunes or subscribing to Netflix to watch TV and movies. When it comes to academic articles, books, and streaming media, however, the library is usually the one paying to access the content and that access is then generally restricted to students and other members of the university community. The TA’s link to the article likely would have worked if Simone were connected to the university’s computing network, whether on campus or remotely.

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LICENCE AGREEMENTS

Licensed

Library Resources

Terms of Use Include:

Price

Restrictions on access

Restrictions on use

Expert Negotiators

LICENCE AGREEMENTS

eClass

Academic libraries purchase or subscribe to a wide range of electronic journals, ebooks, and databases from commercial vendors. Because libraries sign licence agreements that enable access to these things, these are often called "licensed library resources.” The terms of use for these licensed resources include things like price (how much the university pays for access), who can access the database content (students, faculty, etc.) and what they can do with those articles and ebooks (copy or share and where or how). Most licence agreements are negotiated by academic librarians for their institutions. These agreements allow for educational uses like posting copies of the articles on a restricted learning management system or including the content in a student assignment that is submitted directly to an instructor for grading. In most cases, these licence agreements also allow for members of the public to walk in and use the databases at a library workstation, but not access them from off campus. Off-campus access is usually limited to members of the university community.

Simone: “Don’t profs just write articles and then the library provides access? And, how is copyright involved in all of this?”

�Oh, hi Simone. It’s a bit more complicated than that, although some open access publishing models are moving in that direction. Right now, however, it’s more likely that books and articles written by professors, such as Professor Pam, and graduate students will be published in an academic journal.

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JOURNEY OF AN ACADEMIC ARTICLE

Publisher

Academic

Author

Library

Content Aggregator

HUZZAH!

NEXT STOP DISSEMINATION STATION!

Publishing

Agreement

University Community

The steps between writing and accessing the book or article may vary but, in general, it involves the author, the academic publisher, content aggregators, and libraries.

�Once the book or article has been accepted for publication, the author almost always transfers some or all of their rights under copyright to the academic publisher. Academics are often willing to license or transfer their copyrights because publishers can help with distribution of their work, especially to libraries and traditional retailers.

Publishers either distribute the articles and books via platforms and databases they build and maintain themselves or sell access to the articles and books via other companies known as content aggregators that combine content from multiple publishers.

�Simone: “So academics give these companies the right to sell their works to university libraries?”

�Yes, exactly. The publishing agreements signed by authors usually give the publisher the right to sell the article or book, either directly to libraries or through content aggregators that provide access to licensed library resources. Put another way, the publisher has obtained the copyright or a licence from the author to reproduce and provide access to the content, which can then be sold to the university.”

Simone: “So academic authors must get paid for that, right?”

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TRADITIONAL ACADEMIC PUBLISHING

Publisher

Academic

Author

Library

HA! JUST KIDDING!

Sad Author

(AKA Professor Pam)

I’M LOOKING INTO PUBLISHING OPEN ACCESS NEXT TIME…

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PUBLISHING OPEN ACCESS

By 2025 :

Like this one.

H. Piwowar, J. Priem, & R. Orr (2019). “The Future of OA: A Large-Scale Analysis Projecting Open Access Publication and Readership”

44%

70%

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ACCESS TO LLRs

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

You should now be able to:

Explain why licensed library resources are only accessible to members of the library’s parent organization or community

Describe the role of publishing and licence agreements in relation to licensed library resources

Recognize how the future of scholarly publishing is becoming more open

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

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If you are not a member of the university community you might be able to access licensed library resources by logging into an academic library workstation with a temporary password.

True
False

Licensed library resources are only available to authorized users (such as university staff and students) because:

Of the restrictions outlined in s. 30.2 of the Copyright Act
Terms and conditions in licence agreements negotiated by librarians restrict access to authorized users
Academic articles should not be used by the general public because they have better things to do with their time
Libraries want to make as much money as possible

QUESTIONS

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Simone could not access the article her TA assigned because:

She was not logged into her account on the university network
The TA hopes to sabotage Simone’s GPA
She is not an authorized user
Sunspot activity

To compensate them for transferring their rights to publishers, academics normally receive:

Generous royalty payments from academic publishers
First class travel to academic conferences
Free access to that academic journal for life
Nothing but prestige

QUESTIONS

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The nature of scholarly communications is becoming more open, in part, because:

Of the rise of open access mandates and open educational resources
Academic publishers want to reinvest in creators
Of the intrawebz
There isn’t any money in academic publishing anyway

All licence agreements for library resources:

Have terms and conditions
Are negotiated by librarians based on their professional expertise
Should reflect the needs of the user community (e.g., typical academic uses)
All of the above

QUESTIONS

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Daubs, K. (2011). The house that math built. The Toronto Star. https://web.archive.org/web/20190301135907/https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/02/04/the_house_that_math_built.html

Edmonton Public Library. (n.d.). Online Resources. https://www.epl.ca/resources/

Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., Farley, A., West, J., & Haustein, S. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of open access articles. PeerJ, 6:e4375. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4375

Piwowar, H., Priem, J., & Orr, R. (2019). The future of OA: A large-scale analysis projecting open access publication and readership. INFOdocket. https://www.infodocket.com/2019/10/09/research-article-the-future-of-oa-a-large-scale-analysis-projecting-open-access-publication-and-readership-preprint/

Springer Nature. (n.d.). What is open access? https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/what-is-open-access

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

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Tennant, J. P., Waldner, F., Jacques, D. C., Masuzzo, P., Collister, L. B., & Hartgerink, C. H. J. (2016). The academic, economic, and societal impacts of open access: An evidence-based review [Version 3]. F1000 Research. https://f1000research.com/articles/5-632/v1

University of Alberta Libraries. (n.d.). Where do you find information? [video]. University of Alberta Library. https://www2.library.ualberta.ca/tutorials/foundational/2-1-where-do-you-find-information.mp4

University of Alberta Library. (n.d.). A-Z Databases. https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/az/databases

University of Alberta Library. (n.d.). Off Campus Access. https://www.library.ualberta.ca/services/off-campus-access

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

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Mohamad_Hassan. (n.d.). [Simone]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/vectors/programmer-computer-woman-support-3607627/

Fahmihorizon. (2017). Time. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/time-1193576/

straget. (2017). Clock ticking. Freesound. https://freesound.org/people/straget/sounds/405423/

Tatyana. (2019). Question mark and exclamation mark. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/question-and-exclamation-mark-2460596/

Rflor. (2016). Article. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/article-645939/

progressor. (2015). [Creative Commons]. Pixabay. CC0. https://pixabay.com/en/creative-commons-licenses-icons-by-783531/

arif fajar yulianto. (2018). Wall. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/wall-1647938/

bareform. (2014). Boom bang. Freesound. https://freesound.org/people/bareform/sounds/218721/

IMAGE AND SOUND REFERENCES

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Danimasetoma. (2017). Logo Netflix. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY SA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Netflix_logos#/media/File:Logo_Netflix.png

Apple Inc. (2015). [Itunes logo]. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ITunes_logo.svg#/media/File:ITunes_12.2_logo.png

Dawid Sobolewski. (2015). Mockup article. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/mockup-article-244221/

Wilson Joseph. (2022). Document. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/document-4852107/

Icomoon. (n.d.). Database. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=database&i=1472004

Eric Benoit. (2014). Upstairs. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/upstairs-32888/

IconTrack. (2019). Arrow. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/arrow-2793910/

IMAGE AND SOUND REFERENCES

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chrystalizabeth. (n.d.). [Pam]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/en/teacher-bookworm-glasses-professor-359311/

Daria Szymonowicz. (2017). Documents. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/documents-1353220/

Michael Wohlwend. (2014). Gutenberg press. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/gutenberg-press-86670/

Rob Crosswell. (2017). Library. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/library-1122689/

James Smith. (2017). Contract. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/contract-869929/

WEBTECHOPS LLP. (2019). Database [Content aggregator]. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/database-2864695/

Trisula. (2019). Computer. The Noun Project. CC BY. https://thenounproject.com/icon/computer-2387560/

IMAGE AND SOUND REFERENCES

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Closing Slides Music: Rybak, Nazar. (n.d.). Corporate Inspired. HookSounds. CC BY. http://www.hooksounds.com/

Unattributed materials are contributions from the Opening Up Copyright Project Team and placed in the Public Domain.

IMAGE AND SOUND REFERENCES

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CONTRIBUTORS

Copyright Office

Technologies in Education

Centre for Teaching and Learning

University of Alberta Library

School of Library and Information Studies

Adrian Sheppard

Amanda Wakaruk

Mireille Smith

Anwen Burk

Cosette Lemelin

Graeme Pate

Krysta McNutt

Michelle Brailey

Sarah Polkinghorne

Luc Fagnan

Julia Guy

Michael B. McNally

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University of Alberta. (2019). Licensed Library Resources. Opening Up Copyright Instructional Module. https://sites.library.ualberta.ca/copyright/

LICENSING AND ATTRIBUTION

Suggested Citation:

For the project overview and complete list of modules please visit the project website at: https://sites.library.ualberta.ca/copyright/

Questions, comments, and suggestions should be directed to: ouc@ualberta.ca

This module is made available and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Opening Up Copyright (OUC) module series is made available by the University of Alberta Copyright Office.

OUC modules have been produced with the assistance of funding at the University of Alberta through its Centre for Teaching and Learning's Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) (2017-21) and OER Grant Program (2020), and through a Support for the Advancement of Scholarship (SAS) grant (2021).