Introducing the Internet - Copyright and Citations

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Introducing the Internet - Copyright and Citations

Copyright applies to electronic information just as it does to paper-based and other materials. It can be more difficult to monitor and you should pay particular attention when you are copying and pasting material from Web pages or saving files and images that you are not infringing any copyright. You should also make sure that you cite fully and correctly any quotations or references to online material in your work. You should be particularly aware of moral and legal issues relating to copyright and intellectual property rights if you are considering making material available on the Web, whether it is your own work, collaborative work or material from other sources. This section offers pointers to sites which provide up-to-date debate and advice on copyright as it applies to electronic information and on citing electronic information.

Copyright Reference Sites

Professor Charles Oppenheim writes a regular column in Ariadne on copyright. In issue 5, Professor Oppenheim provides an annotated list of a large number of sites for reference on copyright, at:

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue5/copyright/intro.html

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a page on intellectual property rights at:

http://www.w3.org/IPR/

Citing URLs Within a Document

There is no right or wrong way to cite the various types of Internet information. In the same way that there are several different standards for citing paper-based media, the recommended style often depends on the author's or publisher's preference, or standards set by particular organisations or subject or discipline groups. An example of a URL cited within a document would be:

<URL:http://www.sosig.ac.uk>

although many URLs are now simply listed as:

www.sosig.ac.uk

Citing Internet Resources in a Bibliography

As there is no consensus on the preferred style, it is important to outline the main underlying principles when citing Internet resources. These are:

To provide as much information as necessary to allow another user to access the resource
To provide information to allow the user to contact the originator, if appropriate
To follow, as far as possible, the order of referencing that is commonly followed in paper-based academic referencing

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