Although the ILL department is more than willing to fulfill all requests, existing copyright laws may delay and/or interfere with the fulfillment of digital requests.
CONTU guidelines, in compliance with Section 108 of the Copyright Act, limit a library's access to articles published within the last five years. (The current five-year frame is between 2021 and 2025.) During every calendar year (January - December), the library's ILL department can only request up to five articles published within the last five years from the same periodical title. In addition, each article must be from a different issue.
Requests that exceed this "rule of five" will either be delayed or cancelled, depending on copyright price and/or external access. To comply with this rule, the library either needs to purchase the item from an external vendor or pay a permission request fee to the journal's publisher. Each request for a journal article that has exceeded copyright compliance will be individually assessed. Depending on the available fulfillment options, it may take up to thirty (30) additional days to fulfill or ultimately cancel the transaction.
Duplicate requests for previously ordered and received items will be cancelled if the library is unable to re-acquire them via a copyright-compliant method. As part of CONTU guidelines, the library maintains records of all ILL requests and their fulfillment within the last three calendar years to verify compliance.
The following journals have exceeded copyright clearance for the 2025 calendar year:
We reserve the right to cancel any request that violates federal copyright law.
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