Well perhaps, but it is not your call to make. It really is up to the author to make that decision. If someone admired your house or your car, that does not entitle them to give strangers a free tour or free ride? You need to ask permission. It’s the proper, courteous, ethical and lawful thing to do. The rightful owner might have had other plans with their property.
Well it’s the same with intellectual property. When someone takes another’s intellectual property and posts it on the Internet without permission it can interfere with their intended use or plans. Most often professionals write articles with their intent of getting them published someplace. They submit the articles to a journal, magazine or newspaper and hope it will be accepted for publication. Many of these sources expect original publications. If it was published elsewhere even on the Internet it could be rejected as no longer an original publication.
Still other publishers expect that if you summit an article for consideration they retain rights to it and that the author agrees not to publish it elsewhere including the Internet. So if a manuscript is published on the internet it could have repercussions in that it could be denied for publication on the grounds that author did not abide by the agreement not to submit it elsewhere or that since it is now out there for all to see it is old news and yesterday’s newspapers.
Actually something like this occurred recently. In August of 2006, the President of the American Psychological Association, Gerald P. Koocher, PhD graciously forwarded an e-copy of an article that was submitted for publication to a limited number of individuals on request and was accepting comment. The article had stated clearly on the cover page that it was submitted for publication and stipulated clearly that it was not to be distributed. It even had the well known “©” indicating it was copyrighted. Despite that injunction the entire article was soon discovered posted to the files section of a popular Yahoo Internet discussion group for mental health clinicians where they freely exchange information. Any number of up to 800 people could have downloaded the article and passed it on to any number of others.
Given Dr. Koocher’s prestige and eminence in his field this article could have been one of the most widely disseminated articles long before it ever got published where intended. And if someone would do it to the president of the APA it could be done to anyone. On the other hand given his prestige it is unlikely that a major journal would reject it simply because some thoughtless inconsiderate individual decided to post it to the Internet without permission. So in this particular case it could be a wash. But what if it were someone not quite so eminent or well known? What if it were a doctoral student after spending possibly years working on their dissertation decided to submit an article to a professional journal? Would they find their manuscript acceptable to a professional journal where it counts?
You see there is a bit of snobbery in many professions. If you are in publish or perish academia there is a hierarchy of prestige in publications and this can count in your chances of getting promotions and tenure. Professional peer reviewed journals count more than non-peer reviewed; Internet publications such as web or e-publications count far less. Whether that should be the case or will continue to be the case is open to question, however lowest on the hierarchy are posts to bulletin boards email discussion groups, listservs etc. In fact there are many who argue that email discussions are hardly publications at all but merely public utterances, like getting on a soapbox.
Why would anyone post someone’s manuscript to the Internet without permission? Surely in the case of the above it was not malicious. No doubt the poster thought they were doing something good. No doubt the road to spreading the word on the Internet like the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Oftentimes as in the case above the person posting without permission have PhDs or masters degrees and some have published in their own right. So it is difficult to claim ignorance. We should know better. One possible explanation may be attributed to the ‘ethics creep of the Internet” similar to the concept of slippery slope. Because there is a feel of anonymity, notice I said feel and not an actuality, people might be tempted to say or do things that they might not do in every day ‘real” of face to face life. It doesn’t feel real.
A colleague Sheila Peck, LCSW a clinician and editor said, “The Internet, which supplies us with such a vast array of "stuff," is still like a magical quasi-place, and somehow the notices and caveats don't have as much meaning as they do in traditional print.”
There may be some truth to that. So much occurs on the Internet so quickly and with the false appearance of privacy that it is understandable that the Internet is seen as magical and private. That is what often gets children in trouble when they say or do inappropriate things on places like MySpace, Facebook and other Internet hangouts for children and teens. They think it’s magic and anonymous and confidential but that is hardly the case. Discussion groups and listservs groups are very much like the MySpace for professional mental health practitioners. Some have no idea of the dangers and pitfalls.
There is another theory that could explain why professionals might do things on the Internet that they might not do in every other venues and that is that at least for the present the chances of caught or being held responsible for one ‘s behavior is relatively small. The number of intellectual property infringements, copyright violations and probably plagiarism are so common and so numerous that the odds of getting away with it are good. Look at the number of news articles ripped (cut and pasted) from news sources, journals etc. without permission despite clear Terms of Use policies by Internet servers and publishers. It’s done because one can get away with it and no one will know. Or perhaps no one will care. In that case organizations such as Yahoo and news sources such as the NY Times, Washington Post etc do all a disservice by making no serious attempt to enforce their terms of use. One letter from an attorney of the NY Times to Yahoo and one letter from Yahoo to one of these list owners or moderators and the practice will be reduced substantially.
However if the latter is the case it is a cause for grave concern. You see if a mental health professional bases their professional decisions on the odds of being detected and held accountable and not a personal sense honor in doing the right thing than what will they do in the privacy of their offices with vulnerable patients? It’s a sobering thought.
What can we do about it? That is a good question and one ironically asked by Dr. Koocher In an interesting called “Reactions to Learning about Misconduct: Interviews with Researchers” It can be found on the internet on his website http://www.ethicsresearch.com/ Go to (Reactions to Learning about Misconduct: Interviews with Researchers - please click here:) In keeping with accepted policy I will merely quote two sentences relevant to this discussion and encourage all to read the entire article at the appropriate place on the web.
“We know that whistle blowing usually results in serious harm to the whistleblower. Caught off guard by the sudden knowledge that a student or colleague has breached scientific ethics, do we sadly do nothing, thinking that discretion is the better part of valor? Or do we find a way to guide the person back to ethical
conduct without creating all manner of destruction to ourselves and others?”
In any profession the whistleblower rarely receives a standing ovation for their efforts. Fortunately in my case being retired there is very little they can do to harm me.
