Harriet Swain's 7 October 2008 The art of avoiding plagiarism in the Education Guardian had me smiling when it was pointed out to me today, with its "Don't forget that even if you paraphrase someone else's ideas you still need to mention whose they are.".
The art of avoiding plagiarism was published a few days after I'd written to Harriet Swain, and subsequently Donald Macleod, the Guardian's Education Editor, asking for the Guardian to acknowledge its sources in its 14 August The art of being virtual, which drew quite heavily on What to advise a student about using the web here in Fortnightly Mailing.
Getting no reply to two emails to Donald, one to his colleague Alice Woolley, and one to Siobhain Butterworth, the Readers' Editor, and feeling embarrassingly like "angry of Tunbridge Wells", I wrote by fax to Alan Rusbridger, the Editor of the Guardian asking for the Guardian to credit me for the material it had re-used. A couple of days later (and this may have had nothing to do with my hassling Alan Rusbridger) I got an acknowledgement from Siobhain, and yesterday she wrote to me to saying ".... since the Guardian's editorial code says that journalists shouldn't publish other people's material without attribution I agree that your contribution should have been acknowledged. The article has been amended to make that clear."
In the overall scheme of things this is a trivial story, except if it gives encouragement to others to push mainstream publishers to acknowledge their sources, and insofar as it shows the eventual proper working of the Guardian's editorial code.
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