Use/Publication of Abstracts That Accompany Journal Articles

["Karen Tschanz" <KTSCHANZ@mail.mcg.edu>]

Dear Listers:

I would appreciate your advice on answering these questions, 
recently raised by a faculty member:

"I am creating a bibliography of articles on a topic. My 
bibliography will be published as a journal article or technical 
report.

    -do I need to get permission of the publisher to include the 
abstract that appears in the cited article, or does my use of 
those abstracts fall under fair use? (small portions of the 
original publication)

    -If [I] obtain the abstract from a database like PubMed, which 
is not itself copyrighted and is in the public domain, does that 
affect my use?

Is there a citation or source that I can refer to for 
substantiating this?"

Thanks in advance for your expert opinions and interpretations!

Karen S. Tschanz,  M.L.S., M.B.A., M.S.O.D.
Asst. Prof./Chair, Content Management
Robert B. Greenblatt, M.D., Library, AB-241
Medical College of Georgia
Augusta, GA 30912
E-mail: ktschanz@mail.mcg.edu