Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Copyright Compliance and Sharing Articles

Do you need to share published articles with a group or team? It’s a great way to make informed decisions. However, did you also know that forwarding a PDF of copyrighted material to a group of people is in direct violation of copyright laws and guidelines? There are work-arounds that are permissible (and legal).

One option is to share a url (or link) to the article like this :

Melnyk BM, Fineout-Overholt E, et al. Evidence-based practice: step by step: the seven steps of evidence-based practice. Am J Nurs. 2010 Jan;110(1):51-3. PMID: 20032669. Available at : http://tinyurl.com/ya8xftr Accessed 6 January 2010.

This way, you’re sharing the TRAIL to where the article lives in our licensed databases, not generating multiple copies for all your friends and acquaintances. All your team members have to do is click on the link in the citation to get to the full-text article. Then individuals can decide if they want to print or save the article future reference.

Affinity Library Services has access to over 12,000 journals online. We’ve probably got what you’re looking for.

Contact your Librarians, Michele Matucheski (MMC) or Margo Lambert (STE), for assistance in 1) formatting citations and 2) finding the right url/link for the article you want to share. It’s not always as easy as harvesting the link out of the browser location box. Some of those urls are temporary and won’t work a day later, or they may be ridiculously long. Margo and Michele have some tricks to make that easier and smoother. Just ask us!