discuss: Correctly referencing another author(s) in a document
Subject:
Re: Correctly referencing another author(s) in a document
From:
Mary Gardiner ####@####.####
Date:
16 May 2003 03:55:19 -0000
Message-Id: <20030516035510.GA2859@titus.home.puzzling.org>
On Fri, May 16, 2003, Guru - wrote:
> I think I asked this question is the past but I'm not sure of the
> answer.
>
> What is the correct way to reference an author when I have used
> portions of there work in my document? The document is the GNU/Linux
> Tools Summary HOWTO hosted at:
> www.karakas-online.de/LinuxCommands/t1.html
>
> Because in some areas I have used material that was copyrighted under
> a non-free license and have paraphrased and edited it, that is legal
> isn't it? (the author is referenced in the references section).
Generally, you should clearly indicate in the body as well that the
idea/description that you are using is not your original work. In
academic writing this is done with a footnote eg "Several types of GNU
spider plants grow bright foliage in winter[1]" where [1] is a footnote
citing the work, or with a short citation along the lines of "Stallman
(1997) observed that several types of GNU spider plants grow bright
foliage in winter" or "Several types of GNU spider plants grow bright
foliage in winter (Stallman, 1997)".
There are two reasons for this:
1. Giving the person whose work it was sufficient credit.
2. Giving the reader a way to get more information.
If you only give references at the end of your document, it is
impossible to tell what help you got from each document, and it is also
impossible for someone who is particularly interested in GNU spider
plants to know whether to ask you more about them, or which of your
references to read.
In academic writing (as opposed to here, perhaps?) not having citations
in the document body where you use someone else's, even if they are in
the references list, is grounds for getting in a fair bit of trouble.
Most tools have some way to generate and insert the references
automatically as long as you have a marker of some kind there, but I
don't know how to do referencing of that type in Docbook.
> But there is some material which is under a free-license (GFDL) which
> I would like to use, do I need to paraphrase it? how do I correctly
> reference that this there work? (ie. do I need to quote an entire
> block and then have a thing saying this is from reference no 4. or
> something?), they will of course be added to the references...(do I
> need to mention every author of that document? (because there a list
> of 20....)
I'm not sure of the particular format the TLDP uses, but I'm sure
someone more informed will respond as to how many authors to list in the
bibliography.
You should read the GFDL as to how much of the work you can quote and
how you need to deal with the fact that they still own the copyright.
I suspect that if you want to briefly quote from or cite any document at
all, regardless of the licencing, you should clearly indicate that it is
a quote (using block indentation or quote marks) or if you paraphrase,
cite it in some way as above, for exactly the same reasons as you cite
non-free work.
-Mary
