CREDITING SOURCES OF INFORMATION SURVEY
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Publishing
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CREDITING SOURCES OF INFORMATION SURVEY |
Below are the responses from PubSIG members to the following question I posed on December 2, 2003:
"Do you have guidelines for Extension authors to follow--with respect to crediting other sources of information--when writing publications or developing Web sites for lay audiences? If so, are you willing to share them?"
I heard from ten people--in some cases within minutes of having posed the question! And the responses are proving to be very helpful to me. Perhaps you'll find them useful, too.
--Meg Ashman
AUBURN UNIVERSITY (Carol Whatley):
We just try to handle questions as they arise, which is much less effective
than having the policy written down. Thanks for sharing the responses you'll
get.
FORT VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY (Cindy Gambill):
This is a problem I've encountered quite often in the past couple of
years. I require writers to credit their sources, regardless of the publication
format. I don't enforce any particular format for the citation, but there
must be one.
I know this is also a problem in newspapers. My husband is the managing editor of newspaper. He's had problems with one of his local columnists "accidentally plagiarizing" material. To check on this, he does a Google (www.google.com) search on a particular phrase from each column. He's encountered verbatim plagiarism on several occasions. I'm considering using this technique to check on the publication material I receive.
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY (Jane Honeycutt):
We encourage them to limit their acknowledgments to a simple statement
or paragraph at the end of the manuscript.
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY (Tom Knecht):
We developed the attached checklist and certification form last year
to help our specialists understand when they needed to give credit to a
source of information and when they needed to obtain permission to use
copyrighted material. It has helped a lot. Over the years in Extension
work, I have encouraged our authors not to give credit for information
that is "common knowledge" in their field but to credit only those sources
of information that is novel or unique. The rationale is that a document
with a lot of footnotes tends to turn lay readers off.
[NOTE FROM MEG: Tom's checklist is available here as a PDF.]
PURDUE UNIVERSITY (Jane Brown):
Well. . .let me tell you about one such specialist who failed to credit
the source. . .or maybe I shouldn't. Long story short: Another
state notified us that we would either give credit to the source or suffer
the consequences (not us in AgComm), but the client. We had to go
back into the files and assign credit, and we had to go to the Web and
assign credit. When you put something on the Web that does not belong
"legally" to you, then you have breached one of the critical tenets of
the copyright law: distribution. One cannot by law distribute another person's
creative endeavors without permission.
We don't have any guidelines, but we sure do share our stories, which just about always takes care of the issue. If you want guidelines, just call your copyright office. They could probably assist you.
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY (Judy Winn):
Ah. . .the age-old problem of crediting sources! Our "policy" is not
really so much a policy as an expectation that authors will credit their
sources for Extension publications just as they do for scholarly writing.
I believe most of them do that, though I'm certain that not all do, or
at least not all the time or as thoroughly as they should. Once in a while
I'll find out, accidentally usually, that material hasn't been credited.
Then I'll suggest that the author do so.
However, there is no way for us to police this. The editors assume that the manuscripts we're given to work with are complete, including acknowledgments, etc. The peer review process (which is almost always followed) probably motivates authors to give proper credit.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA (Jim Coats):
We have two web sites that relate to this, one for publications (http://anrcs.ucdavis.edu/Production/guidelines/default.shtml)
and the other for web pages (http://groups.ucanr.org/help/Site_Builder_Basics/Copyright_Information.htm).
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA (Dale Evans):
We do not have a policy on this. As editor, I occasionally encounter
inconsistencies of voice that signal "heavy borrowing," and I ask the authors
if some attribution is in order. A lot of extension writing involves compiling
information from other sources, and I've found that most of our authors
give credit where credit is due.
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO (Diane Noel):
Our extension authors do not cite references in their extension publications.
However, if they borrow heavily from other people's work in producing their
own, we expect them to acknowledge the source(s), usually in an acknowledgements
section. They do sometimes include "Further Readings" sections in their
publications, so that readers with strong interest in the subject can pursue
it in greater depth.
UNIVERITY OF MAINE COOPERATIVE EXTENSION (Kyle McCaskill):
We experience the same issue: I have been quite frankly horrified at
the number of instances of outright plagiarism I have found in material
intended for lay audiences (in print and on the Web), aside from simple
failure to credit information sources. I put together some training material,
purely for UMaine Extension internal use, on issues related to copyright,
libel, invasion of privacy and plagiarism, which I point authors to. You
might find the last section on good citation practices useful.
[NOTE FROM MEG: Kyle's training material is available here as a PDF. For more information about this training material, contact Kyle.]
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