It seems to me that the operative question is: "Who exactly wrote these
abstracts?" If they were written by NLM employees (not contractors)
then they are "works of the United States Government", and not subject
to copyright in the U.S. If, as is often the case with scientific
journals, they were written by the article authors than they are almost
certainly covered by the copyright assignment to the journal in
question. Would it be possible for you to link to the abstracts within
pubmed?
-----Original Message-----
From: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
[mailto:CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of Joan .
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 4:55 PM
To: CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property
Subject: [CNI-(C)] Medline abstracts copyrighted or not?
I have read the copyright information through Pubmed and I am not clear
on
the issue of fair use. If I do a search on Pubmed and download the
citations and abstracts (when available) for further review to determine
which references would be worth purchasing the full text article, is downloading those abstracts considered fair use as long as I include all
identifying information to acknowledge the NLM?
They state ""Government information at NLM Web sites is in the public
domain. Public domain information may be freely distributed and copied,
but
it is requested that in any subsequent use the National Library of
Medicine
(NLM) be given appropriate acknowledgement."
I cannot imagine locating hundreds of abstracts and need to request
permission for every author to download those abstracts for review
and/or to
share them with a colleague to decide which full text articles to
purchase.
It seems to me that this should be considered fair use for research
purposes
but I would be wrong since it would part of business which is profit.
Thank you for feedback.
Joan
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