The Library subscribes to thousands of electronic journals, including full-text electronic resources and bibliographic databases for the CURAJ Community. All electronic resources available through the Library and eShodhSinhu Consortium are governed by license agreements. The terms and conditions for using these resources are spelt out in license agreements that the CURAJ Library and the Consortium signs agreemen with each publishers on behalf of our University. The licenses for electronic resources impose two types of restrictions on its usage, namely i) who can use these resources; and ii) how the resources can be used.

The first restriction defines authorized users for e-resources, which generally includes students, faculty, staff and onsite visitors of the University. The second restriction deals with how these resources can be used. Individual users are responsible for ensuring that e-resources are used for personal, educational and research purposes only.

Individual 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
  • Viewing, downloading, copying, printing and saving individual articles
  • Using e-resources for scholarly, educational or scientific research, teaching, private study and clinical purposes
  • Sending a copy of an article to another authorized user (i.e. current faculty, students or staff)
  • Posting the URL to the publisher's version of the article on a class website (publisher links will allow only authorized users access)
  • Use of robots or intelligent agents to do systematic, bulk or automatic downloading is not permitted
  • Systematic downloading or printing of entire journal issues or volumes, or large portions of other e-resources is not permitted
  • Using e-resources for commercial gain is not permitted (i.e. reselling, redistributing or republishing licensed content)
  • Transmitting, disseminating or otherwise making online content available to unauthorized users (i.e. sending to mailing lists or electronic bulletin boards) is not permitted
  • Posting the publisher's version or PDF of an article to an open-class website is not permitted (instead, post the URL to the article, which will allow only authorized users access)

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.