Desktop Library
Library services - terms of use for e-resources
General terms of use
University of Helsinki researchers, lecturers, students and staff may use electronic materials with any computer connected to the University of Helsinki network.
The university staff and students may also use the electronic materials remotely outside the university network. Remote sessions require an active user id for the University of Helsinki network ( remote connections ).
The visitors of the University of Helsinki Libraries may use the electronic materials with the computers located in the libraries.
Terms of use for the individual electronic materials are defined in their respective licenses. Individual licenses are listed in the NELLI-portal under each material (
).
The usual permissions and restrictions concerning normal daily use of the electronic materials are listed below. If you have questions about the licensing of materials, please contact the library staff.
What is allowed:
- browsing and information retrieval
- printing of reasonable amounts of retrieved sets for study or research purposes
- copying (to a disk or hard drive) of reasonable amounts of retrieved sets for study or research purposes
- in case of e-books and wide full text material, printing of modest excerpts is permitted for study and research purposes (ie. not the whole book, and not for commercial purposes)
- ONE copy by e-mail, mail or fax to one other person for personal use as a form of scientific communication
Course materials for the University of Helsinki for non-commercial purposes (terms of use may vary with different materials)
- However, a direct linking to a certain part of a full text material (e.g. e-book or a full text article) is usually permissible, since the user is automatically authenticated. This is the commendable method.
- The departments of the University of Helsinki are generally permitted to incorporate excerpts from electronic resources in their electronic course study packs for educational purposes in connection with specific courses provided that:
a. Each such excerpt carries an appropriate acknowledgement of the source, volume, issue number, title, author and publisher.
b. Each such excerpt contains an appropriate designation of the copyright holder.
c. All such excerpts are deleted when they are no longer required for such purpose.
- The permission for attaching full text excerpts to the electronic learning environments or web-pages of departments should be reviewed from the individual license of each material.
- The departments of the University of Helsinki may use printed excerpts of electronic material for educational purposes in connection with specific courses offered for academic credit at the University of Helsinki.
What is not allowed:
- use all or any part of the licensed material for any commercial purposes
- distribute the whole or any part of the licensed materials to anyone other than authorized users
- systematically make print or electronic copies of the multiple extracts of the materials for any purpose
- print or copy a whole book (e-books or large full-text materials)
- remove or alter the authors' names or the publisher's copyright notices or other copyright management information, identification or disclaimers as they appear in the licensed materials
- mount or distribute any part of licensed materials on any electronic network other than the University of Helsinki secure network(e.g.. Internet, World Wide Web)
- use computer programs that automatically download licensed material (web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators)
Frequently Asked Questions
- May I scan a journal article or book if it is not available in an electronic form?
- I am planning a course for the students of the University of Helsinki on Moodle e-learning platform. May I use electronic articles and pictures published in e-journals in my course material?
- May I republish my own article on my personal web page? The article was originally published in Journal of Environmental Management.
- May I publish the results of my database searches e.g. on a web portal so that those articles which cite a certain article would be searchable through the portal?
- May I write a program which does searches in Nelli or in databases like ISI Web of Science or Annual Reviews? I would like to store metadata records locally on my own computer.
1. May I scan a journal article or book if it is not available in an electronic form?
- For your own personal use, you may scan any published article, picture, book or other material.
- You may not present scanned copyrighted material in a teaching situation.
- You may not scan copyrighted material for any commercial purposes without a permission of the copyright holder.
- You may not present scanned copyrighted material on the web or on any e-learning platform without a permission of the copyright holder.
- You may not distribute printed copies of scanned copyrighted material for other people.
- However, you have a right to cite in accordance with the citation traditions of your discipline.
- The above mentioned applies to all methods of digitizing, e.g. digital photographs.
- Remember to check, whether the article you need, is already available in an electronic form:
- Nelli Portal includes all the electronic materials (including e-journals) available at the University of Helsinki.
- Helda includes articles and electronic learning materials for the students of the City Campus.
- E-books you can search from the Helka catalog.
2. I am planning a course for the students of the University of Helsinki on Moodle e-learning platform. May I use electronic articles and pictures published in e-journals in my course material?
You may link to search results or materials contained in the databases and journals licensed to you. Linking is the safest way of using licensed material. Some publishers also allow you to compile course packages if the course material is stored on a password protected e-learning platform, such as Moodle. You can always contact the Helsinki University Library, library@helsinki.fi , if you want to have further information about the license agreements.3. May I republish my own article on my personal web page. The article was originally published in Journal of Environmental Management.
Most of the publishers allow to self-archive and republish your own published papers. However, you have to always check whether your publisher allows republishing and under what conditions.
Elsevier allows the author archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing) under the following conditions:
- On author's personal or author's institution's server
- Published source must be acknowledged
- Must link to journal home page
- Publisher's version/PDF cannot be used
You can check if your publisher allows self-archiving:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
If you cannot find your publisher on these services, you have to contact your publisher and ask a permission to republish your article. If the article has several authors, each author must give her/his permission for republishing.
Researchers of the University of Helsinki can archive their articles in Helda open research archive if the publisher allows self-archiving.
4. May I publish the results of my database searches e.g. on a web portal so that those articles which cite a certain article would be searchable through the portal?
According to the license agreements it is prohibited to distribute any part of the licensed material on the internet. The employees and students of the University of Helsinki may use licensed material for their own study and research. It is forbidden to distribute the whole or any part of the licensed materials to anyone other than authorized users.
In many services, you can save a search history alert or a citation alert. The alert automatically searches the latest update to the database and then sends the results to you by e-mail.
5. May I write a program which does searches in Nelli or in databases like ISI Web of Science or Annual Reviews? I would like to store metadata records locally on my own computer.
You may not systematically download licensed articles or reference records. It is prohibited use computer programs that automatically download licensed material (web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators). However, you may save a modest amount of search results on your own computer for your private study or research.
Many publishers or database producers provide alert services. You can save a search history alert or a citation alert. The alert automatically searches the latest update to the database and then sends the results to you by e-mail.