At times, material usually available through subscription may appear available from other websites.
Sometimes, this is legitimate (for example, through institutional repositories and permitted subject repositories, such as PubMed and arXiv). However, at other times, it is in breach of copyright law: for example, some articles on ResearchGate and Academia.edu are sometimes available without the copyright owners’ permission.
A copyright owner is not necessary the author or creator
We recommend not linking to ResearchGate, Academia.edu and personal web pages.
Exercise care to ensure that the linked resource is available legally. It is unlawful to purposely link to illegally hosted resources on the Internet.
We recommend that you include a complete reference using the APA Style reference, which mandates the inclusion of a hyperlinked Digital Object Identifier (DOI) (usually starting with https://doi.org/10…).
This link is a permalink that takes users to the article’s landing page on the publisher’s website. Students will be able to access the full text according to these conditions:
- The article was published in open access
- The publisher has made the document accessible (though it could be subject to territorial and temporal restrictions)
- The Lanchester Library must have a subscription to the resource (off-campus users may have to log in via OpenAthens or Shibboleth), without which the user will receive an error message or be prompted for payment.
Providing a permalink to resources through Locate, following the correct reference details is possible.
What about hyperlinks and copyright?
How do I link to e-published articles?
Why shouldn’t we link directly to PDFs?
How do I find a legal version of an e-publication?
What about hyperlinks and copyright?
The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.
