Before copying, ask yourself whether what you are about to do could adversely affect an author's financial return from the copyrighted work. Most academic authors already have assigned their copyright to their publisher, who is the interested party. Music and graphics are most sensitive to market considerations. Infrequent copying of articles from scholarly journals is generally acceptable. The readership for any one scholarly article is statistically close to zero, so there is no economic impact to consider.
Most copying is done by interlibrary loan offices.
Institutions and state systems pay fees to the Copyright Clearance Center for this privilege.