research process - Is it illegal to cite books that were illegally downloaded or accessed from a library?

How illegal is it to cite books that were illegally downloaded?

If they aren't available in the university library, if you can't really afford the books (maybe you will make one reference in one article and the book costs $250+), if there isn't anything else you can use (published articles, reports, etc)... it's one more citation for the author. So in fact you might be helping the authors academic career (here I am considering only academic authors).

I do try my best to find other articles that I might be able to use in my work, but sometimes there is nothing else written, or not enough time to do the extra search.

What do you do?

ps1: I do buy books that are important to my research.

ps2: I do download books that can be important to my research.

Answer

The illegal act of course is the download, never the citation. @Federico Poloni answered that correctly.

However:

If they aren't available in the university library, if you can't really afford the books

besides the possibilities @StasK mentioned:

• In many countries there exist inter-library catalogues (e.g. GVK) that tell you which libraries have the book you're looking for. Once you know that (or your local librarian found out for you), you can ask your local librarian to either get the whole book via inter-library loan, or



• to order a partial copy (e.g. the chapter or the exact pages you need).


• There are also commercial document delivery services (see for an example: Subito). Which offer tracking down documents and again either loan of the book or partial copies.
  Even the linked commercial service charges only 9 € per book inside Germany for non-commercial customers and 25 € worldwide for commercial customers but excluding UK and USA (I don't know why).


• If you're talking about a thesis: university libraries usually have a copy at least of all PhD theses done at that university, for Bachelor or Master theses you'd often have to ask the institute (or supervisor) where the work was done.


• In Germany, the national library has a copy of each book published in Germany or in German (or about Germany) from 1913 on. There are also field-specific large libraries, as for example the TIB Hannover for technical literature.

So, are you sure "can't really afford" is a valid argument?

(Whether you nevertheless download pirate copies, or ask your neighbour to let you have a look into her book, or buy it despite the fact that the neigbour at the other desk owns it as well, stays entirely your own choice.)

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If I have to get a book by inter-library loan, I try to make a copy of the vital chapter. This is legal here in Germany (single copies for personal use, reseach or teaching of not too large part of a book).