Appropriate Use Of Electronic Resources Policy

The purpose of this policy is to promote the efficient, ethical, and lawful use of SMU’s electronic resources. Electronic resources (e.g., databases, datasets, e-journals, e-books and streaming audio/video) provided by the SMU Libraries are governed by license agreements that restrict use to current students, faculty and staff of SMU and the Singapore Copyright Act.

It is the responsibility of each user to ensure that use of these electronic resources is for non-commercial, educational, scholarly and research purposes only.

Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to:

• Commercial use.
  • e.g. during internships
• Violating the Singapore Copyright Act.
  • please refer to http://smu.sg/copyright
• Downloading excessive portions of a resource.
  • e.g. hoarding of data, regardless of purpose.
  Exception: If you wish to conduct Text and Data Mining on any publisher’s database, please contact SMU Libraries for more details.

• Sharing IDs and Passwords.
  • e.g. allowing anyone else to access the online databases using your credentials.
• Transmitting, sharing, copying or making accessible online content to non-SMU parties.
• Uploading or otherwise incorporating licensed content into AI systems (University authorised or otherwise) may be restricted or governed by individual license agreements that vary by vendor and publisher. Please contact SMU Libraries before using any Libraries’ licensed content for this purpose.
• Use of scripts, robots, spiders or crawlers or any other data mining tools to automatically and systematically copy and download licensed resources.

These prohibited activities jeopardize the SMU Community’s continued access to licensed electronic resources. Publishers and vendors monitor web activity, usage, and abuse of their resources closely. Violation of this policy and the license terms may at minimum, result in:

1. loss of privileges and disciplinary action for the individual; and 
2. loss of electronic resource access for the entire University.  

All SMU users must comply strictly with the terms of the licenses as well as the law, and act responsibly while using these electronic resources. 

Usage of electronic resources must also comply with Singapore Management University Acceptable Use Policy.