Another casualty of Firecrown, Russ Niles out at AVweb

Half Fast said:
I agree emphatically with your sentiment, but is it really "plagiarism" when Firecrown owns the originator?
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Plagiarism is distinct from copyright violation. If you copy the original creator's work without crediting him, that's not illegal, but it is plagiarism (an ethical distinction rather than a legal one).
 
flyingron said:
Plagiarism is distinct from copyright violation. If you copy the original creator's work without crediting him, that's not illegal, but it is plagiarism (an ethical distinction rather than a legal one).
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I don't have a Flying subscription. What was the attribution? Was there any at all?
 
asicer said:
I don't have a Flying subscription. What was the attribution? Was there any at all?
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I don't have a subscription either. My assumption is that since the same organization paid for the content, they can reproduce it in as many of their publications as they want. The problem with that model is if I've already paid for a subscription to (say) Aviation Consumer, why would I pay for a subscription to Flying if it carries the same content?
 
MauleSkinner said:
I had to write a training manual for my company. I copied and pasted relevant sections from other company documents without providing any citations, disclaimers, or other source identification. In technical communication, paraphrasing is discouraged, as is expending the time (and therefore money) to write something original.
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Thank you for the explanation. For academic publishing, "self-plagiarism" ranges from being unethical to merely "frowned upon"
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Thank you for the explanation. For academic publishing, "self-plagiarism" ranges from being unethical to merely "frowned upon"
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Interesting article!

Of course, the alternate approach, citing your own previous work every time you reuse text, ups your own citation count. It is frowned on to cite yourself too much, as citation count is a key indicator of the impact of a publication, often used in making tenure and funding decisions. Too many self-citations make it look like you are padding your numbers. At least that used to be the case; it's been years since I've published anything.
 
GaryM said:
Interesting article!

Of course, the alternate approach, citing your own previous work every time you reuse text, ups your own citation count. It is frowned on to cite yourself too much, as citation count is a key indicator of the impact of a publication, often used in making tenure and funding decisions. Too many self-citations make it look like you are padding your numbers. At least that used to be the case; it's been years since I've published anything.
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Ah yes, citation reindeer games. Apropos of nothing, thank you for reminding me why I ran away from academia. Thankfully, an institution of "higher" learning an hour drive from a certain bomber Air Force base in the South extended me a job offer so paltry almost 18 years ago (mind you I was a broke O-2 without full time Active Duty benefits for context), that it disabused me of the idea of relying on academia for career wages and retirement building.

I could write a book, (and I will after retirement), about the grift of US academia. For brevity I will say that what passes for academic work these days, by volume, is patrimonial garbage. The noise to signal ratio of US graduate content is insane. My supervising professors at "highly regarded" places (like GATech and Purdue, since I like to fart in church) were nothing more than absentee landlords. Total potemkin village dynamics, using the marquee of top end research funding, which is objectively true only at the very top, to peddle rice pudding to the overpaying undergrad masses.

When it comes to actually lifting people up, you can't beat open enrollment community colleges. It's the lords work by comparison. Digressing.
 
MauleSkinner said:
The way I’m reading that article, it can range to “somewhat encouraged,” for some of the reasons I noted in my response.

Unfortunately that sometimes causes problems with our computer overlords.
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There's a range of opinion on this in scientific circles. See #14 in the citation below:
https://pubs.acs.org/pb-assets/documents/policy/EthicalGuidelines-1676503020770.pdf. The American Chemical Society considers reusing a couple of sentences to be Ok.
GaryM said:
Interesting article!

Of course, the alternate approach, citing your own previous work every time you reuse text, ups your own citation count. It is frowned on to cite yourself too much, as citation count is a key indicator of the impact of a publication, often used in making tenure and funding decisions. Too many self-citations make it look like you are padding your numbers. At least that used to be the case; it's been years since I've published anything.
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I work in industry, so tenure and funding doesn't apply to me. I have a paper I wrote that I often cite, because I use the technique I created in new ways. I don't pretend the original technique is new, but the subsequent papers do contain a short explanation of the technique for context, with a citation back to the original paper if the reader needs more details. Each time, I ask if this citation is needed. Too many self-citations is still considered poor form.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Ah yes, citation reindeer games. Apropos of nothing, thank you for reminding me why I ran away from academia. Thankfully, an institution of "higher" learning an hour drive from a certain bomber Air Force base in the South extended me a job offer so paltry almost 18 years ago (mind you I was a broke O-2 without full time Active Duty benefits for context), that it disabused me of the idea of relying on academia for career wages and retirement building.
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It depends on the university and the field of study. Without more information, one can't read anything other than you had a bad experience.
hindsight2020 said:
I could write a book, (and I will after retirement), about the grift of US academia. For brevity I will say that what passes for academic work these days, by volume, is patrimonial garbage. The noise to signal ratio of US graduate content is insane. My supervising professors at "highly regarded" places (like GATech and Purdue, since I like to fart in church) were nothing more than absentee landlords. Total potemkin village dynamics, using the marquee of top end research funding, which is objectively true only at the very top, to peddle rice pudding to the overpaying undergrad masses.
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Again, it depends on the university and department. I'm not sure why "overpaying undergrad masses" are mentioned as undergrads rarely do research. Research funding "marquee" is intended to attract graduate students and post-docs. Again, I'm sorry for your bad experience. That's not to say there aren't problems in academic publishing, but neither is it as bad as you claim: https://retractionwatch.com/
hindsight2020 said:
When it comes to actually lifting people up, you can't beat open enrollment community colleges. It's the lords work by comparison. Digressing.
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Community colleges are generally very good at teaching although I'm sure there are some exceptions. Some of them do good research despite having few resources.
 
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A few points:

1) FLYING is not a university; it's a magazine.
2) FLYING is not an engineering firm or a manufacturer; it's a magazine.
3) Firebomb owned both publications being discussed.
4) No one has yet told us whether the article had the same author's name both times it was published. If the author was credited, and given that Firebomb owned the material anyway, there's no question of "plagiarism."
 
I think we are missing the most important question….if an article gets republished in another publication ( even if owned by the same parent) does the author see a residual from that?
 
crashton said:
I think we are missing the most important question….if an article gets republished in another publication ( even if owned by the same parent) does the author see a residual from that?
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Depends on the Rights basic the original author worked to.

Usually, if the writer is actually employed by the publication, it's considered a "work for hire" and the author's original compensation is the only one he or she gets.

If the writer is a freelancer (like me), it really depends on what rights the publisher agreed to at the time the work was submitted. For instance, my first published work was an "I learned about Flying From That" article for FLYING Magazine. The agreement at the time is that Flying would retain "All Rights". Thus, when the story was republished in a book several years later, I didn't get anything more (nor did I expect to, I knew what rights I'd sold).

For my normal freelancing, I include the phrase "First Serial Rights" on the upper right of the first page. This notifies the publisher that the work had not yet been published, but I would be retaining the right to sell it elsewhere after it was published. Since much of my homebuilt writing ended up being included in books I eventually wrote, this clause was necessary.

The original posting referred to a used aircraft report in Aviation Consumer; this was likely done by one (or more!) of the staff and thus would have been a work for hire, with the rights retained by the publisher.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Or did they buy everything for the email addresses and data behind previous subscribers. I have not subscribed to Flying in years but still get emails almost every day. Could opt out, but sometimes there is actually a news bite in the email.
 
gregjay said:
Or did they buy everything for the email addresses and data behind previous subscribers. I have not subscribed to Flying in years but still get emails almost every day. Could opt out, but sometimes there is actually a news bite in the email.
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Even if you opt out, you'll be resubscribed. They need to keep their email list opted in to sell ads.
 
I just got an email from "IFR" magazine saying they missed me and asking me to resubscribe :rolleyes:
 
This has been a fun discussion. Question: when you subscribe to a flagship publication, do you expect to be served recycled content? Should the publisher acknowledge that they are recycling prior content?
 
chemgeek said:
This has been a fun discussion. Question: when you subscribe to a flagship publication, do you expect to be served recycled content? Should the publisher acknowledge that they are recycling prior content?
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I’m not bothered by “recycled.” The ones I’ve seen from IFR are good. Unless you’ve read them before, there’s value in republishing. They kind of did this before Firecrown. Articles from the Belvoir mags republished on AvWeb for the different audience.

But, at least in print, when I’ve seen republication, like collections and anthologies, it’s typically accompanied by, “originally published in…” I can understand if folks see its absence as tacky or worse.
 
midlifeflyer said:
I’m not bothered by “recycled.” The ones I’ve seen from IFR are good. Unless you’ve read them before, there’s value in republishing. They kind of did this before Firecrown. Articles from the Belvoir mags republished on AvWeb for the different audience.
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The difference, IMO, is that AvWeb is free, so I’m not paying for the content -new, recycled, etc.

With a paid magazine subscription, I expect first run content.
 
chemgeek said:
This has been a fun discussion. Question: when you subscribe to a flagship publication, do you expect to be served recycled content? Should the publisher acknowledge that they are recycling prior content?
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I have no problem with recycled content, particularly if there’s a reason behind it… “In honor of the anniversary of _____, we are republishing this article,” or, “In light of recent events, we wanted to publish an article on ____, and no one could say it better than Bob, whose article is reproduced here.”

Even just, “we think this is an article worth revisiting,” is fine. As long as it’s the exception, not the rule.
 
I don’t mind re-runs if I haven’t seen them before. If there’s AI involved and I’m paying, I expect it to know how long I’ve subscribed and to which mags so that it can customize my “feed” to avoid recyclable articles I might have already seen. That would be something, wouldn’t it?
 
midlifeflyer said:
I’m not bothered by “recycled.” The ones I’ve seen from IFR are good. Unless you’ve read them before, there’s value in republishing. They kind of did this before Firecrown. Articles from the Belvoir mags republished on AvWeb for the different audience.

But, at least in print, when I’ve seen republication, like collections and anthologies, it’s typically accompanied by, “originally published in…” I can understand if folks see its absence as tacky or worse.
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Hell, even in the old Belvoir days the same old stuff got recycled from time to time. I'd let my subscriptions drop from time to time after getting tired of the same old stuff.
 
flyingron said:
Hell, even in the old Belvoir days the same old stuff got recycled from time to time. I'd let my subscriptions drop from time to time after getting tired of the same old stuff.
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I don't recall too many articles that were republished wholesale. The same subject? Sure, subscriptions come in and out, readership changes. and there really are just so many things that are brand new. This past year, one of my articles was in many ways a revisit to a subject I had written four or five years earlier.
 
asicer said:
I don't have a Flying subscription. What was the attribution? Was there any at all?
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Attribution is there. If the original article was written by Pete Pilot, the republished article shows as being written by Pete Pilot.

FWIW, I disagree that what they're doing is plagiarism, so long as they attribute to the author. Plagiarism is passing off somebody else's work as yours. At least with respect to the articles which they attribute to the original author, they're not doing that. If, for example, they republished Pete Pilot's article and said it was authored by someone else or "Flying staff," that would be plagiarism. That's a different issue from not mentioning that it's a reprint.
 
flyingron said:
Hell, even in the old Belvoir days the same old stuff got recycled from time to time.
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In those cases, did the byline credit an individual author? Or was it simply attributed to "Aviation Consumer Staff"?
 
I saw this particular issue in the pilot's lounge at the airport. The article in question is attributed to "The Aviation Consumer." I have no idea whether that's how the byline read in the original publication.

I did notice that FLYING seems to be much thinner these days. The multi-page ad for The Fields was gone, as were Dick Karl and Ben Younger. If they weren't reprinting stuff from old pubs, it would be more akin to a small flyer (pun intended) than a magazine.
 
Half Fast said:
I saw this particular issue in the pilot's lounge at the airport. The article in question is attributed to "The Aviation Consumer." I have no idea whether that's how the byline read in the original publication.
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I don't know about that one, but I know that even withing the Belvoir print magazines, there were articles attribute to "staff" even though they were written by someone.

The IFR reprint article in the same issue you saw was attributed to the original writer.
 
asicer said:
In those cases, did the byline credit an individual author? Or was it simply attributed to "Aviation Consumer Staff"?
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In at least one case, an article I wrote for Kitplanes, and printed there with proper attribution, was republished on AvWeb and attributed to "AvWeb Staff".
 
kyleb said:
...Brink is this, that, and the other. None of the resume information has to do with experimental aircraft. Not an awe inspiring hire at first glance.
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Don't sweat it; the real work will get done by AI anyway. Brink is just there to click the button to accept terms and conditions.
 
Half Fast said:
Don't sweat it; the real work will get done by AI anyway. Brink is just there to click the button to accept terms and conditions.
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Is there a dog to bite him if he touches anything?
 
kyleb said:
...Brink is this, that, and the other. None of the resume information has to do with experimental aircraft. Not an awe inspiring hire at first glance.
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I don't think Dave Martin had a background in experimental aircraft, either. The editor doesn't really have to, if they've got a stable of writers with the appropriate expertise. Doesn't sound like the case, now.

Ron Wanttaja
 
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