Terms and Conditions of Use of The Knowledge Network

The use of and access to pages of this website are subject to the disclaimer and terms and conditions set below. By using or accessing this website, you agree to be bound by these terms and conditions.

Disclaimer

NHS Education for Scotland operates The Knowledge Network website to allow the site's content and services to be freely available as far as possible. NHS Education for Scotland uses its best efforts to ensure the accuracy and reliability of information on this website. However, no guarantees are made that the information contained on this website or associated, or linked to websites is accurate, complete and current at any given time. Information presented on this website or associated sites may change at any time. Any views expressed on this website are those of the writer and not of NHS Education for Scotland. Any information appearing on this website is issued as general information and is not warranted by NHS Education for Scotland, or any other health organization, nor should it be taken as advice. No responsibility can be accepted by NHS Education for Scotland or any other health organisation for action or inaction as a result of information contained on this website. This website is not intended in any way to replace the advice of your doctor. Specific advice should be sought in specific situations from a properly qualified health worker.

Copyright

Introduction

The Knowledge Network website contains external links to websites that provide users with information and learning resources. It also integrates citations and abstracts from external content providers such as OVID, EBSCO, EMERALD and others. Users should observe the copyright and intellectual property terms and conditions applied by the copyright owners of these external resources. Author, Provider, Source and Publication details information are provided for resources signposted through The Knowledge Network.

It is the responsibility of all users of The Knowledge Network to ensure that their use of an electronic resource accessed through this portal is within copyright permissions.

If you are unclear about how to proceed, contact the NES Knowledge Services Group at knowledge@nes.scot.nhs.uk.

Copyright in eBooks, eJournals, and bibliographic databases

Electronic Journals

Certain activities are permitted and others forbidden by publishers of electronic journals. The Knowledge Network provides a combination of subscription and free electronic journals. Subscription electronic journals are normally those accessed through an NHS Scotland ATHENS username and password, but some are made available through I.P. recognition. For these journals, NHS Education for Scotland signs a licence with publishers or providers which governs the use of that publisher's online content. Failure to stay within the terms of the license risks losing access to resources for all users.

If you want to use an electronic journal for anything other than making single copies of individual articles for personal use, you are advised to consult the licence terms for that journal. Many electronic journal sites include a link to the terms and conditions of the licence.

Licence terms vary from publisher to publisher, but a few general principles are:

Usually permitted

Authorised users may usually:

  • print a copy of an article for personal use (research, teaching, private study) - but systematic downloading is usually forbidden, see below
  • download a copy of an article for personal use (research, teaching, private study)
  • send a copy of an article to another authorised user
  • create documents with live links to electronic journal articles
  • save links to electronic journal articles in Shared Spaces and community websites.

Sometimes Permitted

Some licences permit authorised users to:

  • incorporate articles or portions of articles into course packs for teaching (each article or portion of an article should carry appropriate acknowledgement of its source, e.g. author, title, and "originally published in <name of journal>")
  • make articles available through a secure intranet or Virtual Learning Environment for teaching use (each article should carry appropriate acknowledgement of its source in the link)

Usually Forbidden

Licence terms will usually not allow you to:

  • systematically download, save, or print articles from an e-journal (e.g. all articles from one issue of a journal)
  • remove or alter the authors' names, the journal title, the publisher's copyright notices, or other means of identification from an article
  • make multiple print or electronic copies
  • mount articles on an internet server (although mounting on a secure Intranet server may be permitted). This includes saving pdf files and uploading them to Shared Spaces or community websites. You can, however, upload links to the original source.
  • use articles for commercial use
  • send printed or electronic articles to unauthorised users (i.e. anyone who is not an authorised user of The Knowledge Network)
  • alter, abridge, adapt or modify articles
  • make photocopies from a downloaded pdf file

Electronic Bibliographic Databases

Certain activities are permitted and others forbidden by publishers of electronic bibliographic databases. The Knowledge for Network provides a combination of subscription and free electronic databases. Subscription databases are normally those accessed through an NHS Scotland ATHENS username and password, but some such as MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library are made available through I.P. recognition. For these databases, NHS Education for Scotland signs a licence with publishers or providers which governs the use of that publisher's content. Failure to stay within the terms of the license risks losing access to resources for all users.

It is advisable to check for terms of use conditions which may accompany on-line databases - these are often accessible by clicking on a hyperlink at the foot of the databases' home page.

License terms vary from publisher to publisher, but a few general principles are:

  • Single electronic copies of results of data searches may be held for semi-permanent storage on a magnetic storage medium for personal use. Users are required to delete all such copies on termination of their employment, course or partnership arrangement that entitles them to use NHS Education for Scotland licensed content.
  • Therefore, for the duration of your entitlement to use NHS Education licensed content, you can download references from databases to RefWorks or other bibliographic software for your personal study, research or teaching requirements.
  • Many licenses will not permit users to distribute electronic copies of the datasets they retrieve from searches.

The use of databases that can be accessed without NHS Education having to sign a formal license agreement will usually be governed by The Copyright & Rights in Database Regulations which came into force on 1st January 1998. Under these regulations, provision has been made to protect certain kinds of collections of material as databases under copyright, and/or under a new form of property right known as database right.

The regulations state that extraction or re-utilisation of all or a substantial part of the contents of a database without the consent of the owner of database right, infringes that right. You also have to bear in mind that repeated and systematic extraction or re-utilisation of insubstantial parts of the contents of a database without the consent of the owner of database right may amount to the extraction or re-utilisation of a substantial part of those contents, and therefore to an infringement of the right.

It would be a good idea to consider this issue if you frequently search and download references from the same bibliographic database into your bibliographic software.

Electronic Books

Certain activities are permitted and others forbidden by publishers of electronic books. The Knowledge Network provides a combination of subscription and free electronic books. Subscription electronic books are normally those accessed through an NHS Scotland ATHENS username and password, but some are made available through I.P. recognition. For these books, NHS Education for Scotland signs a licence with publishers or providers which governs the use of that publisher's online content. Failure to stay within the terms of the license risks losing access to resources for all users.

Any printing or copying from eBooks should be within copyright guidelines. It is advisable to check for terms of use conditions which may accompany electronic Books. These are often accessible by clicking on a hyperlink at the foot of the eBook home page.

Licence terms vary from publisher to publisher, but license terms will not usually permit you to:

  • Download all or a substantial part of an eBook
  • Use content for commercial purposes.

NetLibrary, one of the main providers of subscription eBooks to The Knowledge Network, provides the following guidance notes:

"Although you can print parts of an eBook, printing an entire eBook violates copyright laws. netLibrary takes precautions to protect copyright laws; if a suspicious usage pattern indicative of excessive printing or copying is detected, netLibrary logs the activity and sends the user a copyright warning."

It is not possible to download netLibrary books to read offline.

NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services Group content

With the exception of external content, copyright © in the design and authored content of this website resides with NHS Education for Scotland and its agents unless otherwise stated. You may download this NES Knowledge Services Group material freely for private research, study or in-house use. Unless otherwise indicated, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 UK : Scotland License.

Data Exchange and Data Sharing

The NES Knowledge Services Group supports open, seamless access to NHS and other public sector information and learning resources. In order to widen access to information, and enable sharing of information and learning resources, The Knowledge Network platform provides a portfolio of information-sharing technology tools. These enable information services in health, social services and voluntary sectors to share information and learning resources across organisations. These information-sharing tools have created the large database of 12 million plus items of content which sits behind The Knowledge Network.

Partner organisations can also use these tools to create online knowledge services tailored to meet the needs of their own audiences – for example, the Social Services Knowledge Scotland and Health Management Online portals. More information about these tools is available at http://www.healthinformationonline.scot.nhs.uk We welcome discussion with potential partners regarding information-sharing arrangements please contact Dr Ann Wales, Programme Director for Knowledge Management, ann.wales@nes.scot.nhs.uk.

Links to Other Websites

The provision on this website of a link to another website does not constitute any authorisation to access material held at that location. Links to sites are provided for information purposes only and no responsibility is accepted for the quality of resources to be found on such websites. The contents and material made available on linked sites are completely outwith the control of NHS Education for Scotland and as such no liability is accepted for any damages resulting from accessing or failing to access these sites. No endorsement is expressed or implied by the presence of a link on this website. No responsibility or liability for the privacy of personal information is accepted for linked websites, as these are beyond the control of NHS Education for Scotland.

Warranties

No warranty is given that files downloaded or accessed from this website are free from computer viruses. No warranties are made as to fitness for purpose, quality or completeness of information. NHS Education for Scotland excludes any liability for errors in or omissions in information provided on or linked to from this website.

Data Protection for The Knowledge Network and NHS Scotland e-Library services

The information you provide to register for usernames and passwords to use The Knowledge Network and any associated services is kept in a secure online database in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1988. This database is managed by NHS Education for Scotland and held securely on a single database server at Lumison Head Office, Edinburgh Datacentre, 12 Dock Place, Edinburgh.

All personal details and databases are protected by firewalls at Lumison. Only authorized administrators have access to the databases. All data transfer/communication is over a Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

Your information in this database is confidential, and is accessible only to NES Knowledge Services Group staff. We use the details you provide for the purposes of administering The Knowledge Networkand associated services, contacting you about issues relating to the eLibrary service, and evaluation of our systems and services.  We may also use your data in automated reporting about service usage to help us to understand how people are using our services and to plan for future development. With the exception of Eduserv for provision of ATHENS usernames and passwords when requested (see below), we will not provide your data to third parties.  

You may access the information we hold on you directly via the web at www.knowledge.scot.nhs.uk/home/myprofile.aspx or www.mcs.scot.nhs.uk/edit-profile.aspx (My Profile). Alternatively, you may email knowledge@nes.scot.nhs.uk, or send a written request to The ATHENS Administrator, NES Knowledge Services Group, Clifton House, GLASGOW G3 7LD.

Eduserv is the organisation which holds and uses the personal information of registered ATHENS users and administrators. Eduserv is a data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1988.  Full details of Eduserv's management of personal data are available at http://www.athensams.net/privacypolicy.

We try to make the user experience as simple and seamless as possible through single sign on - i.e., enabling users signed on to one system automatically to be signed into other systems managed by NES Knowledge Services Group. Personal data (such as login identifiers and passwords) is encrypted when exchanged between systems, both within NHS Education for Scotland's domain and externally, e.g. to non NHS services such as Athens.

Use of NHS Shared Learning

Users uploading e-learning objects to the Knowledge Network e-Learning Repository are required to register separately for the Intralibrary repository software. User details are held securely in this database at Lumison (address above) in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1988.

Rules and Permissions for use of Online Community Services

Please read the rules and permissions for use of Online Community Services.

Governing Law

The terms and conditions of use of this website shall be governed by the laws of Scotland.