Citation and Copyright Notice
Copyright
All chapters of Art, Intellectual Property and the Knowledge Economy are made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-Alike License. Please click on the button at the bottom of the Home page for details of the license and please respect the conditions of the license. The content of the web pages are also available under the terms of the CC Share-Alike license, but please note that the license does not apply to materials linked to from this, and that the Examiner's Report is exempted from this license and is subject to standard copyright rules.
Citation
Throughout the work here, I have attempted, to the best of my ability, to accurately cite those whose work I have referenced directly and also, as far as possible, to cite references for arguments and concepts. Any mistakes are my own.
A Note on Citation
Citation is a part of the grammar of knowledge. It is central to free and open enquiry. It demonstrates that knowledge is a collective, and well as an individual, enterprise. It is not about designating some form of 'intellectual property' as some suggest.
It is dangerous to confuse, or conflate, the concept of 'ownership' with that of 'property'. Ownership is a faculty of identity. It is a sense of connection: between ourselves and other people, our environment and its objects. For example, we have a sense of ownership over our thoughts. We have a sense of ownership over our children. But that sense of ownership does not provide us with a 'property' in them. A parent's sense of ownership over a child does not confer the right to sell the child to the highest bidder!
Citation is not about property, but rather the structure of knowledge and its accessibility.
Roland Barthes once described reading as a form of writing — a re-creation of the text. The text is always a collaboration between readers and writers. Citation in academic texts is not simply about demonstrating an understanding of a field of discourse. It is the creation of a map that renders the discourse fully accessible and searchable. The better the map, the more open and robust the collaboration.
All academic texts draw upon the imagination, learning and labour of other people. The citations show the reader where the writer has been. An engaged reader has the opportunity to interact on many different levels in relation to this aggregate knowledge, reconstructing the web of writings, influences and contexts, re-creating the text in myriad ways.
Citation helps to render knowledge transparent, searchable and verifiable. But, most importantly, it renders knowledge challengeable. Influences, dependencies and limitations are admitted in a spirit of openness. The collective, disaggregated nature of knowledge is admitted. Personal opinion is always strengthened by the possibility of verification from other sources. But access to those sources also renders that opinion open to debate.
When using materials available on this site, please go with the spirit of the license and, if you're using material here for your writings, do the best for your own readers!
