Canadian university syllabuses with academic and non-academic assigned readings identified.

In the context of the significant court battles that are being fought over the potential copyright infringement involved in distributing the articles and excerpts assigned to students in university courses, this study analyzes 3,391 course syllabuses (2015-2020) from nine provinces and 34 universities across Canada. It identifies the types and proportions of required readings among academic and non-academic sources. Academic readings are assigned on 26.6 percent of the syllabuses, compared to 8.3 percent of syllabuses for media articles and trade book chapters. Among the assigned readings, journal articles lead the list (with 54.3% of all readings), compared to scholarly book chapters (33.5%), media articles (6.0%), and trade book chapters (6.3%). The social sciences lead in the assignment of journal articles and the humanities in trade book chapters, while science was least likely to have assigned readings of any type. The study also found that textbooks are required on a majority of ...