This guide is meant to be an educational resource for those looking at copyright and intellectual property information - This is not intended to be legal advice. If you have questions about your specific situation the librarians can direct you to the proper resources but cannot advise on legal matters. Please seek out an IP lawyer for legal advice.
Fair use is a legal code that allows for some portions of creative works to be used without an author's permission provided that the use is fair & reasonable, does not devalue the work's materials, and does not decrease the expected income a creator has for that work. In essence, this limits a creator's ability to enforce infringement.
There are 4 factors that need to be considered when evaluating material for Fair Use. They are as follows:
Open Access is the practice of making (usually) scholarly works open and freely available. This means that there is no financial, legal, or technical barriers to accessing the materials.
This means that anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, and re-use according to its license. For more information about Open Access please follow this link.