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Geotechnical News • June 2012
Be careful when you use figures from
the Web. Many of them are not under
copyright, but some are. It is almost
impossible, always time-consuming,
to prove that a particular illustra-
tion is not under copyright. You can
always use a figure from Google Map
if you keep the Google logo and the
©-sign. However, some Google Earth
figures do have copyright and getting
permission to use may be a bit time-
consuming. Note, if a figure, a photo,
or a drawing is older than 75 years,
the original copyright has expired and
the figure is in the public domain. But
make sure that the re-use is an image
from the original oldie and not a
younger reproduction that might have
re-created a copyright.
If, instead of re-using an image, you
want to re-use a text, make sure it
is limited in length and marked as a
quote by placing it inside quotation
marks and, I suggest, use italics font.
Otherwise, it could be looked upon as
a plagiarism, which is never permit-
ted. A regrettable and disgusting all
too common form of “self-plagiarism”
is when a paper is submitted to two
different journals after some cosmetic
cuts and additions, a “double-dipping”
in consequence to the “publish-or-
perish” culture of the academic world.
Presenting conference papers with
similarity of material can be accept-
able, however, because a conference
paper is often written to support a
presentation, not for archival purposes.
Such conference re-use or repeated
use should make proper reference to
the main paper presumably published
in a journal.
It is very important that every figure
published in a scholarly paper be iden-
tified as to source, be it a part of the
work described in the paper or a part
of an earlier work, so that the informa-
tion can be traced. As an aside, and a
very important one, nothing should
ever be re-used, copied, or quoted
without proper credit given. However,
the issue of copyright is a different
matter and it is of little benefit to an
author of a paper, only to the pub-
lisher. Perhaps, were the journals not
protected by copyright, some enter-
prising group would scan and dissemi-
nate a journal the moment the original
is published, marketing it at a fraction
of the annual subscription. A waste
of entrepreneurship, of course, but
when I look at the $600 I just paid for
receiving the 2012 hard copy issues of
the two journals mentioned above, I
almost wish somebody would.
At the same time as the world gets
ever more hooked up on-line and
copyrights become harder to pro-
tect, those that can be protected, gets
stricter. It is understandable that at
times bureaucratic correctness then
rises its head. However, all you
authors out there could make life
easier for the next assistant editor to
get through the day with sanity intact
by paying a bit more attention to the
rules and standards and think through
the issues of source of data along with
copyright and permission for re-use
before submitting the manuscript. And
apply the simple solution of extracting
and replotting the data to be used in a
figure in the paper.
Bengt H. Fellenius
Dr.Tech., P.Eng., M.ASCE
Consulting Engineer,
2475 Rothesay Avenue,
Sidney, BC, V8L 2B9
