Dear Member: I would like to thank the members who have expressed their views/comments on the subject "whether requests for full text articles coming from members working for commercial organizations should be entertained on this list or not". I have consolidated the replies received till 03 Mar, 2.30 pm and have appended it to this message. Let's wait for couple of more days before we take a final decision on the matter. Meanwhile, I would like to stress the point that this forum should be used only as a last resort to seek help from fellow members. Many a times the members just shoot off their queries to the forum without doing any homework themselves. I return at lease one or two mails every other day because the expectations of such mails is that the fellow members have to refer to the resources to answer the queries, which very well could have been done by the requesters themselves. Please ensure that you append full signature to your messages, especially when you are seeking help/response from fellow members. Thanks for your cooperation With warm regards, - moderator ------------------------------- I. I think there is no harm in providing reference service - availability related information or referral information - if tracking of full text article is really a problem for a member working for a commercial organisation. Let the requstee then collect the orginal article from the referrals. Many a times even an expert searcher experience lack of information regarding availability of articles, etc. Think about those who really need our help. Completely ignoring or not entertaining the request will be a negative approach for the profession. It also does not match to our ethical standards. Regards, Aman Jha Librarian Confederation of Indian Industry ------------------ II. I agree with you. Krishna Yeri Librarian,IRMA, Anand ------------- III. I beg to offer a slightly different view. As far as copyright infringement is concerned, supplying one copy for personal use of a researcher is OK. It is immaterial whether the end user or his organisation is carrying out research in academic institution or is attached to an industrial research unit, whether fully commercial (say ranbaxy) or industrial research establishment funded by public funds (CDRI, for example). Research is research and the benefits of research go to all. Copyright laws pose no threat either, as per my understanding. However, if a company say Ranbaxy in private sector or IDPL in public sector wants to use the information for commercial purposes (marketing, publicity, beating down competition etc) then copyright fee or licensing fee for each copy must be paid for. Librarians who are a party to this kind of infringement must be aware of their limitations. The best thing would be to avoid ALL requests for photocopies being distributed via Lis-forum. Let us encourage large libraries and library networks funded by govt funds to be more responsive and co-operative in this matter. Regards Dr P vyasamoorthy ---------------------- 1V. I agree. We are an organization that procures and supplies articles to BOTH non-profit/academic, as well as commercial organizations. For the latter, we procure copyright fee paid copies and provide it to them. We have even procured from local libraries and then paid the copyright fee to the US Copyright Clearance Centre, and charged commercial clients for the same. (We discontinued this, because very often we got poor quality copies and the client was unhappy about that, specially after paying a high fee) Our experience has been that many Indian commercial companies are "conveniently unaware" of copyright fee for articles, and many libraries still do provide articles to commercial organizations, charging only a membership fee for services. The libraries do not take care of paying the copyright fee to the publisher/CCC So these commercial organizations take advantage and take copies from the libraries. They come to us if they cannot procure from a library, or if there is an urgency. I would urge that libraries either take on the onus of paying copyright fee on behalf of commercial organizations, or request such organizations to approach us, or any other agency that does similar work. Just as an additional information........We have been a Private Limited company, but are now running as a non-profit organization. Our legal status is in the process of change (taking much longer than I hoped it would), but we have been operating as a not for profit entity since Apr 2005 Vasumathi Sriganesh Director, QMed Services