Terms and Conditions for Use of E-Resources
The Central Library subscribes to various e-journals for benefitting the MDSU academic community. All these resources available through the Central Library and ONOS Consortium are governed by license agreements. The terms and conditions for using these resources are spelled out in license agreements that the MDSU Central Library has consented to with the concerned publishers.
The licenses for electronic resources impose two types of restrictions on their usage:
i) Who can use these resources: Authorized users generally include students, faculty, staff and onsite visitors of the University.
ii) How the resources can be used: Individual users are responsible for ensuring that e-resources are used for personal, educational and research purposes only. Users must 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 for systematic, bulk or automatic downloading. |
| Viewing, downloading, copying, printing and saving individual articles. | Systematic downloading or printing of entire journal issues, volumes, or large portions of e-resources. |
| Using e-resources for scholarly, educational, scientific research, teaching, private study and clinical purposes. | Using e-resources for commercial gain (reselling, redistributing or republishing licensed content). |
| Sending a copy of an article to another authorized user (current faculty, students or staff). | Transmitting or making online content available to unauthorized users (e.g., mailing lists or bulletin boards). |
| Posting the URL link to the publisher's version of the article on a class website. | Posting the publisher's version or PDF of an article on an open-class website. |
Breaches of the license agreement with publishers could result in the suspension of access not only to the individual violator but also to the entire University.
