Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-02-25/Op-ed
Text from Wikipedia good enough for Oxford University Press to claim as own
Last October, I came across the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses (2011) published by Oxford University Press (OUP). I noticed that chapter 31, "Marburg and Ebola viruses", contained a fair bit of text that was nearly identical, word for word, as that in the Wikipedia article Ebola virus disease. A page from the book may be seen on Google Books, with at least the "natural reservoirs" section being nearly verbatim and some parts of the rest of the chapter containing great similarities.
Initially, I made an assumption that someone had copied and pasted from this book into Wikipedia. However, thankfully we have the ability to go back and view every version of Wikipedia that has ever existed. I could thus determine that the content in question was added to Wikipedia back in 2006 and was subsequently edited and expanded between then and 2010, when the greatest similarities occur. From this I could conclude that it was partly written by the Wikipedians ChyranandChloe and Rhys.
Next, I wondered whether one of these individuals was the author of the OUP chapter, namely, Graham Lloyd of the Special Pathogens Reference Unit at Porton Down. I contacted the user who had made the majority of the contributions, who turned out to be a virologist in Australia who assured me that while he had contributed to Wikipedia, he had never contributed to the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses.
Finally, I looked for attribution of Wikipedia in the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses and a release of this book under an open license as required by Wikipedia, and the result was that neither of these have been performed. The hardcover version of the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses retails for $375. I discussed this issue with the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation, who contacted the Oxford University Press. We were hoping that they could negotiate both attribution and release under an open license.
The reputation of Wikipedia in academia often seems to be that it is good enough for academics to use and even occasionally claim as their own work, but not good enough for either students or the “unwashed masses”. Thus I believed that convincing one of the world’s foremost medical publishers to both attribute and use an open license would be difficult. The legal team at the WMF, however, was optimistic. Initial emails from OUP indicated that this case would take longer than usual, as the people involved were “all over the world doing important Ebola work”. This, of course, is not the first time we have come across the academic literature copy and pasting from Wikipedia. In 2012, I discovered a medical textbook had also extensively copied from Wikipedia. (Also see the Signpost's 2012 special report on the misappropriation of Wikimedia content.)
At Wikipedia, we are happy to work with publishers. A year or so ago, I helped guide the company Boundless, which creates open access textbooks mostly based on Wikipedia content for first year university students, on how to appropriately attribute. These books were already released under a CC BY SA license. We attempted to work with the OUP in the same fashion.
On January 20, 2015, the OUP acknowledged that the content originated from Wikipedia and agreed to attribute Wikipedia, but were having difficulty with the open licensing. Following further inspection of the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses , I found more inconsistencies. For example, while parts of the text were exactly the same, the author had not consistently used the same references. The references used on the Wikipedia article supported the text, but the references in the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses that were changed did not support the text in question. The question remains as to why the references were changed. As a result of these changes, the quality of the copied content was lowered.
On February 5, 2015, I emailed the OUP offering to rewrite and update the chapter in question in collaboration with fellow Wikipedians. The next day, they replied via e-mail stating that they had already “independently decided to update the chapter and that that work [was] already in hand”. Writing a textbook chapter takes a fair length of time, likely weeks rather than a few days. Looking at the time line, it is questionable whether the OUP ever seriously intended to attribute Wikipedia. While our content passed their review processes, they claimed it was simply an “inadvertent omission of citation”. It is likely that a replacement chapter was requested immediately after the WMF legal department contacted OUP’s team.
The one good thing that has come out of all of this is that Wikipedia’s content passing a major textbook publisher review processes is some external validation of Wikipedia’s quality.
A look at the references
- Both Wikipedia and the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses include "The absence of clinical signs in these bats is characteristic of a reservoir species. In a 2002–2003 survey of 1,030 animals which included 679 bats from Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, 13 fruit bats were found to contain Ebolavirus RNA". Wikipedia cites a 2005 article from Nature, which does support it. The Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses cites a 2009 article from BMC Infectious Diseases, which does not support it.
- Both include "no Ebolavirus was detected apart from some genetic material found in six rodents (Mus setulosus and Praomys) and one shrew (Sylvisorex ollula) collected from the Central African Republic". Wikipedia cites it to a 2005 article from Microbes and Infection which does support it, while the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses cites [a 2004 article] from Emerging Infectious Diseases which does not support the content.
- Both state "Of 24 plant species and 19 vertebrate species experimentally inoculated with Ebolavirus, only bats became infected" and both use the same reference, a 1996 article from Emerging Infectious Diseases.
References
- The views expressed in these op-eds are those of the authors only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should email the Signpost's editor.
Discuss this story
The text above says
The text above says "I looked for attribution of Wikipedia in the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses and a release of this book under an open license as required by Wikipedia, and the result was that neither of these have been performed. The hardcover version of the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses retails for $375. I discussed this issue with the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation, who contacted the Oxford University Press. We were hoping that they could negotiate both attribution and release under an open license." This contains an important fallacy: that by using some paragraphs of text from Wikipedia in a 900-page multi-author textbook somehow legally requires the entire book to be released under an open licence. The CC licence is not viral and was not designed to be. Additionally, a licence has no legal power to compel anyone - because if they don't obey the terms of the licence then the benefits of the licence cease to exist along with those terms. Without those benefits, they are simply in the same situation as if the textbook had lifted some text from another all-rights-reserved book under copyright.
I assume "attribution of Wikipedia" is a simple mistake since Wikipedia is not the author -- attribution belongs to all the (many) authors who wrote that text collectively. But it is a mistake many publishers make in their attribution when they do give it.
Have they taken sufficient text for this to be considered a copyright violation? I am no lawyer but if this is less than a page of text taken from part of an article and used in a 900 page book, I very much doubt it. And even if it was a copyright violation, it isn't the WMF legal team who could sue because WMF do not own the text. That belongs to the various authors who's work was taken. Perhaps WMF legal would offer to help those authors sue -- but what award would a judge give to two or three random people? What are their losses? They gave the work away for free. Just a few hundred words? It isn't like they stole a 50-page chapter. This seriously is not worth the legal expense. However, if we believe the text taken is too minimal to be copyright theft, the most the authors of the textbook are likely guilty of is plagiarism. Naughty. Slap on the wrist. Reputation harmed. But not illegal. Possibly Oxford will be more cautious about accepting work from those authors again.
If they want future editions of the book to be free of legal issues while retaining the same text, then some attribution would be added and at most the chapter by those authors would be released under a free licence. It depends how integrated the text is with the chapter. Alternatively, they could just offer those two authors $100 to waive their licence terms, which would probably be much more attractive option to everyone.
Another example is if someone uses a picture from Commons then they should provide appropriate licence information and attribution. But it only makes that one picture free (i.e., someone could scan or photograph the picture from the book and publish it again with a free licence) -- it doesn't affect anything else. -- Colin°Talk 11:29, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is, moreover, dictum that copyright does not attach to mere logical statement or compilation of facts. To the extent that the statements of numbers are such compilations, they are not covered by copyright no matter who publishes them (sports leagues which assert "copyright" over scores and stats are not on firm ground, AFAICT). OPU may indeed have found a lazy employee who plagiarized a bit - a student would get suspended at many schools - but it unclear as to whether the Wikipedia article has any literary value. By the way, Wikipedia is so often used by newspapers etc. as to make concerns now a tad risible. Collect (talk) 13:28, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I am not under the impression that they need to release the whole book under an open license. They do need to release the one chapter however under an open license as much of it was more or less from Wikipedia (from a few different articles in fact).
Yes simply attributing Wikipedia is not technically enough, but at least it shows someone is trying and that is good enough for me. People can then come to Wikipedia and figure out who the real authors are which we do not make easy. But that is our own fault.
Yes we asked for the whole book to be release. And yes I considered this a very looong shot which it was. Those not the least bit surprised that they refused as they have no legal requirement to do so.
I agree that "release of this book under an open license" should be "release of this text under an open license" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:03, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Great contribution
Great contribution from Doc James, thank you.
— Cirt (talk) 14:29, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]