University of Pittsburgh Library System

Licensing Preferences for Electronic Resources

The University of Pittsburgh Library system supports the guiding negotiating principles as outlined by CRL and NERL, which will give priority to partners who are willing to work with us to achieve a more equitable and sustainable academic publishing system.  

Licenses are routinely reviewed and should adhere to the general guidelines set forth in CRL-NERL Model License (updated 2024). We generally require that that the license terms include:

• On-campus and off-campus access to all authorized users.
• Authentication methods that conform to current industry standards and prioritize user anonymity.
• Access for all walk-in users. 
• No clauses that limit Fair Use Provisions of the United States and international law. Agreements will allow for the printing, downloading and copying activities, linking to resources in course management systems and scholarly sharing, as well as for any future uses allowed by the fair use provisions. 
• Provisions to use to fulfill interlibrary loan requests in all relevant license agreements.
• Authors retain the non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free right to use their work for scholarly and educational purposes, regardless of any terms to the contrary agreed between the author and publisher. 
• Authors retain the rights to self-archive or deposit their work in institutional, subject-based, national or other open repositories or archives, and to comply with all grant, funder, institutional, or government requirements associated with the work.
• Permission to use the resource for text and data mining, including with non-proprietary tools. 
• Provision of computational rights for researchers as part of all licenses. 
• Provisions to guarantee, in perpetuity, access to back-file content following expiration of agreement. 
• Compliance with the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) in a manner consistent with Web Accessibility Initiative Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA.
• No limitations to making lawful, non-infringing uses to facilitate access by users with disabilities.  
• Confidentiality of user data related to the usage of licensed materials will be maintained. Such data will be used only for the purposes directly related to the licensed content. Usage data shall not be shared with third parties. 
• Provision of COUNTER compliant  usage statistics to support collection assessment and decision making. 
• No auto-renewal, unless a multi-year agreement with specified payment schedules or price caps is in place. 
• No non-disclosure or confidentiality clauses, so we can communicate openly and transparently about our negotiated terms and pricing. 
• Mutual indemnification between both parties to the agreement. 
• Venue to be Pennsylvania (as required by University Procurement). 
• Inclusion of a force majeure cancellation clause.