Proper attribution in teaching and textbooks

[steuard]

In research papers, I'm very clear on the proper protocols for citing previous work and giving attribution to those whose ideas I'm building on. But I've always been enormously less clear on what the right moral and legal procedures are on the teaching side of my job.

For example, I usually write exam problems from scratch (or substantially altered from someone else's inspiration) but I have the impression that it's fairly common for people to simply grab problems out of other textbooks. Do the usual academic standards of proper attribution apply? (I've only rarely seen professors provide citations in their exam problems. Identifying the source could even invite integrity problems if it's a take-home exam.) In a research paper, I'd want to cite the source that gave me the idea even if I changed it completely when I used it, but when writing exams or homework that convention doesn't seem to hold at all.

I've been puzzled for years about similar issues with textbooks. How do you write a textbook for something like introductory physics without inevitably stealing ideas and approaches from the zillions of textbooks that you've used or read in the past? In research, most textbook-level facts aren't given citations at all, but what about specific analogies or ways of explaining a topic? What about a novel choice of order for the topics in the course? Did the second physics text that included chapter summary pages have to cite the first? (Or going farther, did its publisher risk a copyright lawsuit?)

I assume that major publishers have legal departments that are familiar with all the formal standards for that sort of thing. But if there are (or someday are) efforts to write freely available textbooks independently, how do the contributors deal with this sort of thing?

Comments

[beth_leonard]

First: I <3 you! I wholeheartedly appreciate honesty and the attempts to do the right thing.

Second: I think US-law wise I remember something about math not being able to be patented. I don't know how that extends to copyright, but morally I put it in the same category. Someone else may use a physics problem about a charging rhino ice skating at .999c, but it's just going to sound lame unless it came from Helliwell or the professor used Heliwell's book as a text.

Many text books have long introductions at the beginning that usually end with several paragraphs that usually aren't worth reading where the author drones on and on about how inspired they were by the work of others. Maybe that's where it comes from? There's no other proper way to cite the shoulders upon which they stood?

--Beth

[kirin]

Obviously I have no actual legal knowledge about most of this, but here's my gut instinct responses:

Exams and homework aren't being published. If what's in them owes a massive amount to someone else's prior work, acknowledging that seems like the polite thing to do, but I wouldn't sweat it beyond that.

As for as things that may be published: as Beth said, just as you can only patent execution, not raw insight, what's copyrighted is actual text, not abstract ideas. Heck, the vast majority of writing is based on pre-existing ideas. Textbooks in particular I'd say are generally *supposed* to be based on well-accepted ideas, rather than being novel research. As long as the *presentation* is completely original, I don't think copyright would be an issue. A top-level ordering of subjects isn't copyrightable. Though again, if a significant debt is owed, it's polite to state it even if it's not a legal or particularly strict ethical requirement.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

A top-level ordering of subjects isn't copyrightable.

Actually, the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted. (Though I am also told that abstract ideas are not copyrightable, just presentation.)

[pearmeson.livejournal.com]

I think you also have to ask what the purpose of the citations would be. In standard academic literature, they serve several purposes:

1) To help the reader to find relevant material
2) To give credit where it is due
3) To put the stamp of authority on a claim that someone else, or some other work proved, or which is beyond the scope of the current work
4) To construct a web of inter-subjective validity

I don't think 3 or 4 are at all relevant for exams or textbooks.

On an exam, I'd argue that the only relevant concern is number 1, so I would put citations on material where I want the students to be able to learn more later, after the exam is over. 2 is potentially a valid ethical concern, but I think that level of citation would hurt student performance (lots of irrelevant info while taking an exam), and would make it less likely that they would read any of the cites later, because they wouldn't know which ones were most interesting/relevant.

In a textbook I'd make the same argument, but would be a little more willing to add more citations. I'd probably want to put type 2 citations in Endnotes or the Intro, and type 1 citations on the relevant page, maybe in little "For more info" boxes.

No comment on exams and homeworks, but in re textbooks...

[coldtortuga.livejournal.com]

Jen is working with a large class (250+ students) at Harvard. She likes one book for its anatomy, another book for its physiology, yet another for a couple chapters on yada-yada-etc. No text is the best choice for every topic, but there is no way that the students could be asked to buy all these different books for just one class.

BUT.

These texts happen to be published by the same textbook publisher. A sales rep has been working with Jen. Next semester, there will be a new textbook composed of chapters chopped out of all those other texts and bound together. It's a brand-new customized-for-this-class textbook, composed Franken-style from bits and lumps of other books. Eh? EH?? :-)

Re: No comment on exams and homeworks, but in re textbooks...

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great fit for that class! Kim's school in Chicago did some similar things in a couple of classes (though never quite so varied, as I recall), and it can really make things possible that would be completely impractical otherwise. The downside, of course, is that there's very little used market for custom-published books, so it's harder for students to sell them back (or to sell them online).

The most annoying case is when a school does a custom book that's just a slightly reduced edition of a single standard text ("We want this book, but just cut out the chapters on quantum mechanics and optics: we never get to those.") That can save their students a bit of money, but I once had a student who unknowingly bought a used copy of one of those online (it was listed with the original title and author, and maybe even an edition label): she was missing the last few chapters that our class covered.

Re: No comment on exams and homeworks, but in re textbooks...

[chalgaryn.livejournal.com]

As Steuard said, we used custom Franken-texts in Chicago. It was also nice that we could insert some of our own material into the custom book when we couldn't find anything we liked anywhere else.

[lordhylas.livejournal.com]

For exams:
Solution to keep the students honest, while still providing the citation that can allow them to follow up on the problem if they like:

Feel free to borrow the problem from another textbook, especially if it's an especially well-written and appropriate one for the exam. Do *not* include the citation on the exam itself.

Include the citation with the answer-key when you provide that to the students after the exams are returned to them (and after they've had their chance to do corrections if you're going to give them that opportunity, which is a good idea that you've used in the past - I think that helps cement the learning process by allowing the student to better learn from their mistakes, which is the real purpose of exams in the first place).

There. Conscience satisfied, *and* the students have the citation to follow-up on and do further reading and research, if they so choose.