Fair use in US scholarly publishing

Fair use – the use of a limited amount of copyright material without permission – is ill-defined in law; the volume and variety of scholarly publishing is vast; publishers, editors, and authors can be informed or innocent, meticulous or careless, reticent or frank. No short article can adequately summarize this small but vital part of the publishing world. I will merely outline the range of current practice: the different lines that are drawn between reproducing copyright material with and without permission. In addition to my own experience as an author and editor, I have drawn upon conversations with authorfriends, enquiries to book and journal publishers and editors, exchanges on a lawyerly copyright listserv, and web postings on copyright and permission requirements. Section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act, the basic law governing fair use in the USA, states: