Photocopies versus PDFs

This is a long and boring response to "I want a PDF of this article! Why can't the Library get me one?" It would be easier all round if you would just believe us when we say "we can't (except at some cost)". If you can't believe that, then you will have to read on.

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The last ten years have seen electronic journals become established as the dominant form of journal access. Gone are the filing cabinets stuffed full of paper photocopies, in their stead are hard disks full of PDFs, or databases with links to online articles. At NIMR, through the efforts of the Library (and a sizeable, but never big enough budget!), we have access to over 1200 relevant ejournals. But there are many more journals that we do not have access to (read "pay for") and these we get hold of by interlibrary loan (ILL) from the British Library or other libraries. This is where the PDF revolution falls down.

Publishers hate people to read their articles for free. They grudgingly accept that photocopies can be made and even sent from one library to another through ILL. Copyright law allows for this, calling it "fair dealing", so long as it is for non-commercial research or personal use. Publishers definitely do not want PDF copies of their articles to be emailed to potential readers who do not subscribe to the journal. This worries them even more than photocopies because a) it is so much easier b) the quality is much better than a photocopy and c) the electronic copy is just as good as the original, so could be distributed again.

Because Libraries do not purchase electronic journals, but only buy a licence to access them on the publisher's website, use is governed not by copyright law but by the terms of a contract with the publisher. These terms almost always exclude electronic transmission of articles, except under very special circumstances (usually involving the automatic deletion of the file once it has been printed). It often is possible to purchase an individual article direct from the publisher, but this costs several times more than a normal ILL so it is not feasible under our current budget.

We like to say "Yes" to your requests and it pains us to have to say "No" to PDF, but in this case we really don't have a choice.