Scenario:
An instructor finds an article in a professional journal that will be helpful to her in future research projects. She would like to make a copy of the journal article for her personal files.

Response:
Making a personal copy of a copyrighted work for research and reference is a fair use.

Scenario:
A faculty member wrote and published an article in a journal last year. Since she authored the article, does she have the right to make and distribute copies?

Response:
It depends. Authors, at the point of a work's creation, hold the exclusive rights given to copyright owners to reproduce and distribute the work (see Copyright Ownership). However, in the pre-publication process, many authors transfer all or part of their copyright of a manuscript to the publisher, who may request or require the exclusive rights to publish and distribute the work. When these rights are transferred to the publisher, then the author may only copy and distribute the work with permission from the publisher, or after a determination that fair use, a limited exception to the copyright holder's rights, would apply.

In this case, it is important to review and negotiate publication agreements. Publishers of scholarly and academic journals will each have their own default policies regarding author rights. The SHERPA Project in the UK maintains a searchable database of publisher copyright policies from more than 100 academic publishers throughout the world.

For authors entering into publication agreements, Kenneth D. Crews' "Reserving Rights of Use in Works Submitted for Publication: Negotiating Publishing Agreements" is highly recommended.

Scenario:

A researcher would like to use excerpts from an unpublished work in an article. He intends to publish the article in an edited collection of critical essays.

Response:

Even though the work is unpublished, it is still copyrighted. Copyright is assigned to all original works of authorship, including letters, as soon as they are "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." Therefore, the researcher should consider whether or not his use falls within fair use. A four-factor fair use analysis will need to be conducted for each work, considering how much of the work will be used and what the potential market effects may be.

Scenario:
A faculty researcher is writing an article on the influence of Bob Dylan on American pop music to be published in an academic journal. In this article, she quotes lines from several of his songs. Is this a fair use of the song lyrics, or does she need to seek permission to use the material?

Response:
Reproducing portions of a copyrighted work for the purposes of comment and criticism are often allowed under fair use. A four-factor fair use analysis will need to be conducted for each excerpt from each song used in the article. Factors such as length of the excerpt should be considered; using shorter segments that include only the lines necessary for the purpose of the article will lead to a more favorable fair use determination.

Scenario:
A research group at the University wishes to create a database of full-text research articles. The articles would be drawn from the University library's electronic journal collection, and hard copy print collection whenever e-versions of relevant articles are not available. Since this is for research purposes, is there any problem in doing this?

Response:
Copyrighted journal articles available through licensed electronic resources are subject to the terms of the license agreement between the library and the journal publishers. To understand some of the limitations and restrictions that may be contained in license agreements University users should familiarize themselves with general terms of license agreements. Often these agreements will not allow downloading of content and reposting it to another server. So, creating persistent links to articles, or to the library's licensed source and storing those links in the database would be the way for a study group to proceed.

Scanning hard copy of journal articles for inclusion in the database would be a matter involving either getting permission or four-factor fair use analysis for the use of each article. And, any use of the articles by members of the group should be limited to non-commercial, educational, or personal research purposes. Furthermore access to the database must be restricted to members of the study group only. Such a database should not be made generally available to the Internet user community.

Scenario:
A professor is preparing for a year-long sabbatical abroad and needs to take with her a book from the library that is critical to her research. The book was published in 1919 by an American university press. The faculty member is reluctant to borrow and take the library copy for an entire year, in case someone else might need it. Can she make a cover-to-cover copy of the book to use for her research?

Response:
Copyright law protects works for limited times. In the United States copyright of published works endures for the life of the author plus 70 years. After the expiration of this term a work falls into the public domain. In this case the publication is now in the public domain and may be copied without infinging on a copyright. It is safe to say that works published in the U.S. before 1923 are now in the public domain.