Hi,

What are the limits to copyright of a critical reviewer of a report?

I am thinking about sharing my critique of "Hybrid vehicles: a temporary step" (Chanaron, Teske, 2007) with our community. But I'm not interested in violating copyright nor the guidelines of GreenHybrid.com.

My thinking is I would quote the relevant portions of the report with my critique. Unfortunately, this assumes the parts I left out are by default, "OK" when in fact, they may have redeeming elements or failings that I didn't see. To me, over-quoting is preferable because it lets third parties critique the critic, a good thing. I would prefer to start with the whole report, add my comments and then remove the uninteresting parts.

The other issue is staying within the guidelines of GreenHybrid.com. I do not know the authors and have no personal interest in them. However, the work they published (and I bought for $40) has a number of significant errors, misleading statements. Worse, they failed to address, much less resolve, conflicting facts and data. It has mistakes that need to be corrected.

There is a technical issue of how large a posting can be in GreenHybrid.com. I'm not sure how large a posting can be but recently hit a 5,000 character limit on an e-mail. If I have to, I could probably write up my critique as a word or RTF text document and post it as an attachment. Alternatively, I could post the report as a series of postings in one thread by element. This would avoid the character count limit, organize the commentary yet keep everything together. The source or first posting would be a cover note that is a synthesis of the introduction and conclusions. To be fair, I would e-mail my critique to the authors and suggest we discuss this here.

I don't want to stretch the rules of the road and cause GreenHybrid to be seen as a 'flame war' haven. Rather, I want to make sure we preserve our reputation as a fair place for serious people. Sad to say but the 'sound machine' that echoes bad reports has already started to pickup not the original report but the inflated "sales" descriptions of the report. Only by addressing the report directly do we have the answers to "the buzz."

Does this approach make sense? Is there a better way? Comments? Suggestions?

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

ps. Now if we could just charge the authors $10 to read my critique . . . <smiles>

 

Bob, I have to say I'm a little confused. You want to critique what article, exactly, and publish that where?

 

Hi,

The article is titled "Hybrid vehicles: a temporary step" originally published in the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, Volume 7, Number 4, 2007 by Jean-Jacques Chanaron and Julius Teske. I first learned about it and found two subsequent references:

• Science Daily - this is the original review article with the phrase ". . . the misinformed craze for hybrid vehicles especially in the USA, and increasingly in Japan and Europe, and potentially in China . . ." It cites this paper as an authoritative source while repeating hybrid skeptic claims we'd long since moved beyond. So it was surprising to see the old Chestnut about hybrid profitability showing up in 2007. The insulting phrases were another clue that something wasn't right, smelling like another "CNW Marketing" hatchet job that came in the disguise of a serious paper.
• inderscience.metapress.com - these are the folks who sell the paper for $40. Their abstract includes this particular phrase,"It is concluded that even though hybrid technology can not yet be applied profitably . . . " even though Toyota reported in 2001 they were making an operational profit on the Prius.
• The Register by Lewis Page - has all but directly copied the original abstract from "Science Daily" to the edge of plagiarism.
• Wired by Chuck Squatriglia - copies the phrase from the original "Science Daily" using "Misinformed Craze."

The problem is we are seeing echos of the hostile "Science Daily" review built upon a flawed paper by Chanaron and Teske. But it costs $40 to get a copy of this paper.

Rather than just posting a copy of the paper, I would prefer to critique with extensive quotes of problem paragraphs, figures and tables. It won't be the whole paper, just the parts that have problems but that will be a substantial part of the paper.

I have started a thread "More hybrid skeptics" in "Journalism & Media" from the original "Science Daily" article. Perhaps the best answer is to continue posting my critique of the original paper there. Each problem area could be covered one-by-one. But since the original paper is not available online, I would need to include extensive quotes with proper attribution. Otherwise, it becomes another "Science Daily" article lifting what they want to say without giving the source.

In the end, the collected postings would likely cover about half of the original, $40 paper. For $40, I have a PDF file and can accurately cut-and-paste the relevant sections. Each posting would be a 'bite' of the paper but collected together, substantial parts of the paper would be available, with attribution, quoted.

With "CNW Marketing," we didn't have to 'buy' the paper to critique it. In this clever twist, there is a $40 fee to get the original paper. Having bought it, I think fair use includes extensive quotes, not just paraphrasing, to show exactly the problems with the paper. One lesson learned with "CNW Marketing" is sending a critique to the original authors doesn't work as Art failed to consider not just mine but other comments seriously. Nut-case comes to mind and really, they may have no interest in accuracy. Others do and that is who the review is written for.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,

Unfortunately I don't think republishing the data from a research paper is permissible, especially considering the scholarship is not free. You're welcome to critique the methods used in the paper, but copying half of the document may present some real problems for Internet Brands.

 

Ok, then I'll take this approach:

• publish on my own web site the rebuttal - here I will follow what I think to be ethical and legal. It won't be the whole paper but rather a structured review of the problem areas with sufficient content to ensure no ambiguity that it is from the original paper.
• post synopsis here and other hybrid advocacy sites with reference to my web site - this provides insulation so Internet Brands is not put in a bad place.

I do not mind taking the legal risks and certainly believe it is ethical to be as fair with the original authors as possible. But by the same token, it is patently unfair that hybrid-skeptics are free to cite false elements of a flawed report that hybrid-supporters have no access.

It may be that seeing my quotes, the authors may decide to 'do the right thing' and make it freely available for open inspection and review. That won't correct the problems but at least they won't be able to claim it is just one reviewer using 'hybrid-skeptic' ethics.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

Sure, I think linking to your own website is the way to go. Good luck.

 

I had to think of how I instructed my students when they wrote a research paper where, goodness knows, plagiarism is rife. Anyway, I think as long you are generous in your citations with quotation marks and lots of footnotes giving full credit to the authors of the article, you will be ok. After all, you're not stealing their article, you're commenting on it. And in a Democracy, a full and spirited debate is desirable.

 

Bob,

Professional scholarship rarely (if ever) quotes other scholarship in full. If academics can produce new scholarship that criticizes old scholarship without the prospect of infringing on copyrights, shouldn't you be able to do the same?

 

Ordinarily I would agree but the problem is the hybrid-skeptics cherry picked their quotes to bring out the worst of the original paper. I don't want to do the same and possibly be misleading. I am particularly interested in what led to their conclusions about profitability that appears to trace to one 2002 paper.

I've loaded the paper into excel and am converting it into separate sentences identified by page and sentence number. I am also beginning to see the two styles although I can not tag them to specific authors, yet.

Bob Wilson

 

Apparently the Chanaron and Treske paper is not really a problem. I just took a Google tour looking for posting of the 'press release' about this paper. In those cases where comments were posted, even in the most 'looney tunes' sites, the counter-posted comments are impressive. Folks are bringing their real-world experience and showing the 'press release' version of this paper to be bogus.

There comes a time when good-sounding but false claims meet ordinary reality and that is what is happening here. There is no need for a direct review of the original paper when the common experience of individuals is so pervasive that even the press release gets answered by individual reports.

I'm also working on refurbishing Prius NiMH batteries and the early experiments are promising. Thanks to Ken@Japan, there may be a new, terrain driving, math model for Prius performance. In contrast, Chanaron and Treske have revealed that hybrid skeptics have no new facts and data, today's Don Quixote. I've paid my $40 dues and that is enough and Chanaron and Treske get no further draw on my time.

Bob Wilson