A recent discussion on the Liblicense-L list (beginning with this post by Beth Jacoby on February 25) has highlighted Elsevier's policies for inter-library loan of its electronic journal articles: To fulfill an ILL request, print the electronic article, then scan it back into the computer to send it. See the February 28 post by Daviess Menefee of Elsevier Library Relations, or Elsevier's policy page last updated February 7.
Since, in the U.S., print journals are owned, are subject to the "first sale doctrine," and are covered by long-standing CONTU Guidelines, libraries have not had to generally grapple with complex ILL issues for them; however, e-journals from major publishers are licensed, licenses are publisher-specific, and the terms of the license agreements determine if and how ILL can be performed.
A request has also been posted on the list for Elsevier to explain the rationale behind this policy, to which there has not yet been a response. (We'll add it here if/when there is.)
Comment. Any unauthorized use of copyrighted content may be defensible as fair use under U.S. law. But there is less clarity regarding such uses than the fairly well-established ILL guidelines.
Update.Via the Internet Archive, this aspect of Elsevier's policy appears to date back to at least 2005.
As to why we require printing first (and our understanding is that most publishers also do this), the reasons are fairly simple. First, this is most closely analogous to the traditional and well-understood practices of print, where one photocopies or scans the print. What is received by the requester is about the same quality copy.
Second, we are concerned about those within the ILL community who advocate an unmediated system, where requesters enter their requests electronically and these requests are automatically routed electronically to a library holding the material. The article can be retrieved and returned to the requester without the need for human intervention. While we can appreciate the efficiency of such a system, it effectively changes the definition of Authorized User in our agreement from those within the subscribing institution to anyone anywhere in the world.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 3/01/2008 06:18:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
