Q. Can I email a PDF copy of an article to my colleagues for our journal club?

Directly emailing a PDF copy of an article generally constitutes communicating/use of copyrighted material 'owned by other (non-Queensland Health) parties'.

Emailing a PDF copy of an article to a group of people involved in a journal club is not explicitly allowed under current copyright legislation, however certain exceptions and protections exist with regard to use of copyrighted material for study or research.

Further protections and exceptions exist when articles are requested from and supplied by libraries, so the LKC is able to provide copies under Fair dealing provisions.

Our advice is to:

• Send a link to the article if it is available in full text on CKN or other free sources (eg PMC Central, open access, etc). Colleagues can then download / print their own copies
• Send out the reference / citation (ie title, author/s, journal title, year, volume, issue, page numbers) to everyone in your journal club
  • Individuals are then responsible for obtaining / requesting their own copy under section 49 or 50 of Copyright act (ie request through a library under fair dealing provisions)

If journal club members are CHHHS or TCHHS staff they can also submit their article requests to the LKC via email. If journal club members are working in other HHS then they should approach their local QH library (see link below).

The other option is to obtain copyright permission from the copyright holder before distributing the article.

For further information see links below.