[LINK] Copyright questions

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Roger Clarke
> Sent: Friday, 25 March 2011 11:03 AM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Copyright questions
> 
> At 10:36 +1100 25/3/11, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> >A subsequent question:
> >I have come across a webpage which references an article as: Author, 
> >Title, Organisation: (available on the Internet) Is this, 
> rather vague, 
> >reference acceptable/appropriate. (There are multiple copies on the 
> >internet)
> 
> There are multiple 'standards'.
> 
> But they come down to:
> (a)  'more detail than that please!'
> (b)  add '[last] accessed on <date>'
> 
> Why on earth would an author not provide the URL that they used?
> 
> One reason is to cover their tracks, and hence by omitting the URL 
> one invites suspicion.
<snip>

Err, I must beg an exception.
Reasons for leaving off the URL:

(i)   Competitive academic advantage
(ii)  Commercial access to sources only 
(iii) Competitive commercial advantage.

I quite often leave off URL's when only a uni logon [library
subscription service] will obtain access to the content.
I occasionally point to SSRN or one of the other DOI style pay access
sites, but consider that if I supply the title, the authors and the
publish date of the document sourced, that is usually sufficient for a
bibliography.
(This was in fact the only style of citations for over five hundred
years, until the advent of the ubiquitous google Dewey replacement.)

Reasons to check the refs would be to :

A) Debunk nonsense, fraud and plagiarism [for personal academic goals].
B) Additional topic research for personal academic goals.

Qualifier to (A) & (B)
All academic goals eventually have commercial reasoning behind them,
either tenure, or post graduate grant.

Anyone wanting to do additional research would no doubt have a
uni-login.
I do not see a problem with not supplying a URL.

In regards to (iii) above, I have regularly left off crucial reference
material when presenting papers for commercially secret reasons although
if the individual is well published, I might refer to his/her
conclusions as "one popular school of thought as adopted by Koltai T. in
his paper on [paper renamed to innocuous unfindable unreferenced
document - no url supplied] is etc etc."

TomK