Elsevier's ScienceDirect.com has this to say about it:
"You may print or download Content from the Site for your own personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices. You may not engage in systematic retrieval of Content from the Site to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database or directory without prior written permission from Elsevier."
Depends a bit on what is a systematic retrievel... would downloading all interesting articles be systematic?
Many issues of journals are "themed". Here the publisher has gone out of their way to create a "collection" of articles, all of which might be interesting scientifically to a particular person or group. But they then prohibit that group treating the collection as a collection and systematically retrieving it. What about database? Well, e.g. EndNote is capable of creating a collection of citations, to each of which the original PDF article can be added. so I presume the use of eg EndNote in this context is prohibited. Further, they do not mention whether any parts of the PDF can be "re-used". Sometimes, clear text can be copied/pasted. It can be parsed using regular expressions. Thus the OSCAR project at Cambridge can extract <<data>> from such clear text. Is this allowed? Would you have to keep intact the copyright notice with this data?
JCICS:
"Articles and other information obtained from this service are not to be systematically downloaded, re-published in any media, print or electronic. Articles may not be downloaded in aggregate quantities or centrally stored for later retrieval. "
Centrally stored is a clear negation of Institutional archives. Also included in some publisher restrictions is storage on any sort of Network drive. This means that at our place, where we use a SAN (Storage area network) for all home directories, placing any PDF on this SAN is prohibited
Again vague terminology... I'm sure I've seen it more strict somewhere... will report when I find it...
The issue is that virtually each publisher has slightly different restrictions. Tracking them all by the regular user is almost impossible. I have to say that the publishers are probably trying to promulgate policies that are close to unenforceable, or unsustainable in the medium term. Its tempting to conclude that the very concept of a "publisher" may not itself be sustainable in the long term. -- Henry Rzepa. +44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax); rzepahs@mac.com (iChat) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK. (Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email. If expected reply not received, please phone/fax).