Nature Precedings forum: topic
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Improving PDF document security -- disallow editing
Santosh Patnaik
Thursday, 23 August 2007 19:57 UTC
The preprint PDF files served by Nature Precedings do not have any document security settings associated with them. It would be better to have their editing prohibited.
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Replies
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Why would it be better?
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Disallowing editing will keep information presented in the document the way it was authored. This reduces the risk of altered (inadvertently or otherwise) copies of the preprint getting circulated. It (as well as disallowing copying) also discourages ‘lazy’ plagiarism.
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All the documents on Nature Precedings are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (2.5) License which allows one to copy, distribute and transmit the work with attribution (license overview, complete license)
So others are free to copy from the document or reproduce the document as long as there is attribution in the specified form (which must link to the original, and thus unaltered, source). Plagiarism is contrary to the licensing terms and should not be tolerated.
My personal opinion is that having openly available documents such as those on Precedings should help to discourage plagiarism as it makes it easier to see when text has been copied.
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