<p>Depending on what you want to do with it, a possible alternative is to just fold it into the work you're doing, i.e. recapitulate the results, with clear attribution, but inside your work. The results in Szelepcsenyi's paper don't seem to take up too much space to do this with a journal paper. It'd be a bad idea with a conference paper. Of course if you're not sure about where this might be published in any reasonable time frame then a purely expository paper is a better idea.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:48:56.917Z
I like this idea, and let me add that even if you're submitting to a conference, you can still have an extended arxiv version of your work, that includes an exposition of Szelepcsenyi's result
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T09:23:57.303Z
2012-07-27T09:23:57.303Z
Luke Mathieson
<p>I think this is tricky territory.  The author of any creative work legally owns the copyright for that work unless he/she cedes it to another party.  Notwithstanding the legal issues, any researcher would naturally feel that they have ownership of their work.  So, publishing it (and I believe putting it on arXiv is a method of publication) without their permission would be unseemly.  Putting it on one's own web page would be less confrontational.</p>

<p>It is perfectly acceptable, however, to cite a draft paper that sits on somebody's web space.  It does not need to be on arXiv to be cited.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T21:34:32.163Z
I'm concerned, in part, for the *permanence* of Szelepcsényi's draft. (The presentation could also use a little polishing, though.) I have indeed deliberately copied much of the techniques of the draft, and even the structure of his presentation, but with constant citation to hammer home that it isn't original to me, and with some simplifications both for the sake of charity and concision. Is it your opinion, then, that the fact that it contains no original content (*i.e.* that the "added value" of my article is essentially only in the presentation) means that it is tantamount to plagiarism?
Niel de Beaudrap
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:08:23.853Z
@NieldeBeaudrap No, plagiarism is not the issue.  Publishing somebody else's work without their *consent* is the issue.
Uday Reddy
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:52:34.120Z
I am a little disturbed by the assertion that relating someone else's proof in your own words with proper attribution is some sort of copyright infringement. Certainly if I was writing a monograph, I wouldn't have to contact every paper author whose work I am describing for permission, would I? I hope citation would suffice
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-28T06:03:34.240Z
I think a key point here is that there's an important difference between just putting someone else's work on arXiv (and similar acts), and making available a review or exposition of that work. As Sasho said, being able to recount the work of others is a key part of research and academic work.
Luke Mathieson
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-28T06:05:50.217Z
@SashoNikolov Legally, if you publish a work that is based on some other work, you are liable to be sued unless you can demonstrate that there is sufficient new contribution of your own to make it your own creative work.  Academics normally don't go around suing people, but we would at least get upset and regard it as unprofessional conduct.  The OP is not writing a monograph.  He is attempting to publish his version of another author's work.  That is what the title of his question says.
Uday Reddy
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T00:23:09.530Z
@Uday Reddy: Copyright laws are quite different from country to country.  Which country’s law are you talking about?
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T06:55:18.713Z
@TsuyoshiIto. The US law is the one I am most familiar with.  The European laws are quite similar.
Uday Reddy
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T12:15:51.453Z
whether he's writing a monograph or not, he's doing what the writer of a monograph does: narrating someone else's proof in his own words, with proper citation. i seriously doubt that that constitutes copyright infringement (but i am willing to be disproved), and i fail to see what's unprofessional about it.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T14:39:50.613Z
I think that the US copyright law is very different from European copyright laws in the treatment of fair use, which is relevant to the matter of legality of publishing someone else’s work.  But I am not familiar with either the US laws or the European laws.
Tsuyoshi Ito
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T21:13:11.263Z
2012-07-27T21:13:11.263Z
Uday Reddy
<p>This should be perfectly acceptable if it is framed as an exposition article. There is a long tradition of expository articles in mathematics (one example that comes to mind is Thurston's exposition of a method developed by Conway to determine if the plane can be tiled by a given shape, see <a href="http://www.cimat.mx/ciencia_para_jovenes/pensamiento_matematico/thurston.pdf">here</a>). Just make sure that the abstract and the introduction convey that all you're doing is to explain Szelepcsényi's proof.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:42:53.560Z
Possibly a difference here is that there is no expository intent.
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:47:18.747Z
@Suresh That's true and it was bothering me when writing this. I feel that once Niel starts writing, he will inevitably come up with modifications and simplifications or just a different way to present things..which maybe goes towards an exposition. In hindsight, I agree with a comment here that incorporating the result in an extended version of the paper that uses the result, maybe as a clearly marked appendix, may be better.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-30T13:32:57.690Z
I do have an expository intent, but his article isn't in dire need of exposition; his gaps are implicitly filled by context. I do write an account of why Szelepcsényi seems to have chosen to take the approach he does: that's essential for readability, if one is going to deliberately and explicitly ape another person's paper with repeated citation. But it isn't clear to me that playing "mathematical archaeologist" was a sufficient condition to make it an acceptable practice. (Of course, I'm refactoring some of his analysis to try and make it easier to approach, so maybe that concern is moot.)
Niel de Beaudrap
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-26T21:04:06.363Z
2012-07-26T21:04:06.363Z
Sasho Nikolov
<p>This is a soft question aimed at establishing what people think is the professional best-practise for submitting <em>unoriginal</em> work on the arXiv.</p>

<p>There is a draft of an article [1] by Robert Szelepcsényi, at his webspace at the University of Chicago, apparently written more than a decade ago during his graduate studies. The work seems to be  correct, modulo some very minor errors, and contains a result that I would like to refer to, independently of what the University of Chicago intends to do with that webspace. It seems to be available only at that single location; and there doesn't seem to be any publicly available works which duplicate his results.</p>

<p>Partly for the sake of ensuring its correctness, I have taken it upon myself to write notes recapitulating the results and motivations of that draft, acknowledging that it is essentially a recapitulation of [1], and which hopefully smooths over some of the roughness present in the existing draft. I can certainly put these notes online on webspace of my own, but at present the arXiv seems to be the most responsible place to submit this draft for future reference.</p>

<h3>Question.</h3>

<p>Assuming correct attribution, and granted that these results are not widely available otherwise, is there any particular reason that I should not submit my draft of Szelepcsényi's results on the arXiv?</p>

<p>[1] <a href="http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~robert/papers/mod-log.ps">Logspace MOD Classes with Composite Moduli (Preliminary Version)</a> &mdash; Postscript File</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-26T20:17:47.030Z
I think you have to flag the question and ask for it to be CW'd. Only moderators can CW a question.
Robin Kothari
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-26T22:15:11.670Z
Seems like a perfect question for the new [academia.SE](http://academia.stackexchange.com); it is not at all specific to TCS.
Raphael
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-26T22:31:59.757Z
The question doesn't seem to be particular to TCS so IMHO [academia.se] is a more appropriate place for it.
Kaveh
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-26T23:48:54.190Z
isnt this kind of obvious-- have you tried contacting him directly and asking for his opinion on that?
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T11:26:01.707Z
@Raphael, Kaveh: it's not a bad point, though it's something where attitudes are more likely to differ from field to field. Perhaps not for those fields for which www.arXiv.org routinely takes submissions, though.
Niel de Beaudrap
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T12:59:50.070Z
Why hasn't this question been migrated to academia.SE?
Tyson Williams
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T17:29:24.997Z
@vzn: Perhaps you might have more luck than I in finding a current email address (or even a curent affiliation) for him. It's hard to find any addresses which might concievably reach him, and the ones I have tried get notices of failure to deliver.
Niel de Beaudrap
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T21:02:46.393Z
@Tyson, because the question is not *clearly off-topic* on cstheory (at most it is a gray area question), has received considerable number of up-votes, hasn't got any close votes, and the author thinks it is more likely to receive a suitable answer here.
Kaveh
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:16:44.490Z
NdP.. good question. it looks like (maybe from their web page) maybe he hasnt been at the university of chicago in yrs but they kept his files around? isnt this the same famous [Szelepcsenyi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B3bert_Szelepcs%C3%A9nyi) that won the [g"odel prize along with immerman?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immerman%E2%80%93Szelepcs%C3%A9nyi_theorem) ie a near complexity theory celebrity? if so its startling that nobody on this web site is able to locate him! an idea would be to contact his most recent coauthors to see if they can contact him... maybe someone at U Chicago
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:28:25.643Z
it looks like from web search he was last affiliated at U of Rochester...? try contacting the U rochester CS dept or [this contact info](http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/robert) although it points to a foreign email addr
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-27T23:55:32.027Z
he won the prize in 1995 and the last entry on his dblp page was from 1999. seems like he's dropped out of academia or at least out of tcs.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-28T15:41:36.510Z
this is the latest CS paper by him I could find so far from 2004 at U Rochester archives, [Beta_K complete problems and completeness](https://urresearch.rochester.edu/institutionalPublicationPublicView.action?institutionalItemVersionId=446)
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T12:01:12.127Z
@vzn actually this paper is from  1993, it was made available on that repository in 2004 (see where it says "Original Publication Date: 5/1993")
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-29T12:20:07.237Z
i feel weird doing this detective work, but for the sake of science, this is the best contact info i found: a profile for  Robert Szelepcsenyi, PhD, a translator http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/member61791.htm. the email given there is robert@tankred.sk. there are postings on support forums with that email as recently as 2011, so he might still be using it.
Sasho Nikolov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-07-30T13:37:33.973Z
@SashoNikolov: that does seem to be him; there can't have been many Robert Szelepcsenyi-s, PhD who have studied Computer Science at U. Rochester in the past few decades.
Niel de Beaudrap
<soft-question><research-practice>
Submitting other people's work to the arXiv
Niel de Beaudrap
# Submitting other people's work to the arXiv

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-07-26)

This is a soft question aimed at establishing what people think is the professional best-practise for submitting *unoriginal* work on the arXiv.

There is a draft of an article [1] by Robert Szelepcsényi, at his webspace at the University of Chicago, apparently written more than a decade ago during his graduate studies. The work seems to be correct, modulo some very minor errors, and contains a result that I would like to refer to, independently of what the University of Chicago intends to do with that webspace. It seems to be available only at that single location; and there doesn't seem to be any publicly available works which duplicate his results.

Partly for the sake of ensuring its correctness, I have taken it upon myself to write notes recapitulating the results and motivations of that draft, acknowledging that it is essentially a recapitulation of [1], and which hopefully smooths over some of the roughness present in the existing draft. I can certainly put these notes online on webspace of my own, but at present the arXiv seems to be the most responsible place to submit this draft for future reference.

### Question.

Assuming correct attribution, and granted that these results are not widely available otherwise, is there any particular reason that I should not submit my draft of Szelepcsényi's results on the arXiv?

[1] [Logspace MOD Classes with Composite Moduli (Preliminary Version)](http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~robert/papers/mod-log.ps) — Postscript File

**Tags:** soft-question, research-practice
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I think you have to flag the question and ask for it to be CW'd. Only moderators can CW a question.  
> **username_2**: Seems like a perfect question for the new [academia.SE](http://academia.stackexchange.com); it is not at all specific to TCS.  
> **username_3**: The question doesn't seem to be particular to TCS so IMHO [academia.se] is a more appropriate place for it.  
> **username_4**: isnt this kind of obvious-- have you tried contacting him directly and asking for his opinion on that?  
> **username_0**: @Raphael, Kaveh: it's not a bad point, though it's something where attitudes are more likely to differ from field to field. Perhaps not for those fields for which www.arXiv.org routinely takes submissions, though.  
> **username_5**: Why hasn't this question been migrated to academia.SE?  
> **username_0**: @vzn: Perhaps you might have more luck than I in finding a current email address (or even a curent affiliation) for him. It's hard to find any addresses which might concievably reach him, and the ones I have tried get notices of failure to deliver.  
> **username_3**: @Tyson, because the question is not *clearly off-topic* on cstheory (at most it is a gray area question), has received considerable number of up-votes, hasn't got any close votes, and the author thinks it is more likely to receive a suitable answer here.  
> **username_4**: NdP.. good question. it looks like (maybe from their web page) maybe he hasnt been at the university of chicago in yrs but they kept his files around? isnt this the same famous [Szelepcsenyi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B3bert_Szelepcs%C3%A9nyi) that won the [g"odel prize along with immerman?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immerman%E2%80%93Szelepcs%C3%A9nyi_theorem) ie a near complexity theory celebrity? if so its startling that nobody on this web site is able to locate him! an idea would be to contact his most recent coauthors to see if they can contact him... maybe someone at U Chicago  
> **username_4**: it looks like from web search he was last affiliated at U of Rochester...? try contacting the U rochester CS dept or [this contact info](http://www.cs.rochester.edu/users/robert) although it points to a foreign email addr  
> **username_6**: he won the prize in 1995 and the last entry on his dblp page was from 1999. seems like he's dropped out of academia or at least out of tcs.  
> **username_4**: this is the latest CS paper by him I could find so far from 2004 at U Rochester archives, [Beta_K complete problems and completeness](https://urresearch.rochester.edu/institutionalPublicationPublicView.action?institutionalItemVersionId=446)  
> **username_6**: @vzn actually this paper is from  1993, it was made available on that repository in 2004 (see where it says "Original Publication Date: 5/1993")  
> **username_6**: i feel weird doing this detective work, but for the sake of science, this is the best contact info i found: a profile for  Robert Szelepcsenyi, PhD, a translator http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/member61791.htm. the email given there is robert@tankred.sk. there are postings on support forums with that email as recently as 2011, so he might still be using it.  
> **username_0**: @SashoNikolov: that does seem to be him; there can't have been many Robert Szelepcsenyi-s, PhD who have studied Computer Science at U. Rochester in the past few decades.  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_6 on 2012-07-26. Score: 10 | Accepted answer

This should be perfectly acceptable if it is framed as an exposition article. There is a long tradition of expository articles in mathematics (one example that comes to mind is Thurston's exposition of a method developed by Conway to determine if the plane can be tiled by a given shape, see [here](http://www.cimat.mx/ciencia_para_jovenes/pensamiento_matematico/thurston.pdf)). Just make sure that the abstract and the introduction convey that all you're doing is to explain Szelepcsényi's proof.

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: Possibly a difference here is that there is no expository intent.  
> **username_6**: @Suresh That's true and it was bothering me when writing this. I feel that once Niel starts writing, he will inevitably come up with modifications and simplifications or just a different way to present things..which maybe goes towards an exposition. In hindsight, I agree with a comment here that incorporating the result in an extended version of the paper that uses the result, maybe as a clearly marked appendix, may be better.  
> **username_0**: I do have an expository intent, but his article isn't in dire need of exposition; his gaps are implicitly filled by context. I do write an account of why Szelepcsényi seems to have chosen to take the approach he does: that's essential for readability, if one is going to deliberately and explicitly ape another person's paper with repeated citation. But it isn't clear to me that playing "mathematical archaeologist" was a sufficient condition to make it an acceptable practice. (Of course, I'm refactoring some of his analysis to try and make it easier to approach, so maybe that concern is moot.)  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2012-07-27. Score: 7

Depending on what you want to do with it, a possible alternative is to just fold it into the work you're doing, i.e. recapitulate the results, with clear attribution, but inside your work. The results in Szelepcsenyi's paper don't seem to take up too much space to do this with a journal paper. It'd be a bad idea with a conference paper. Of course if you're not sure about where this might be published in any reasonable time frame then a purely expository paper is a better idea.

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: I like this idea, and let me add that even if you're submitting to a conference, you can still have an extended arxiv version of your work, that includes an exposition of Szelepcsenyi's result  

---

### Answer by username_8 on 2012-07-27. Score: 1

I think this is tricky territory. The author of any creative work legally owns the copyright for that work unless he/she cedes it to another party. Notwithstanding the legal issues, any researcher would naturally feel that they have ownership of their work. So, publishing it (and I believe putting it on arXiv is a method of publication) without their permission would be unseemly. Putting it on one's own web page would be less confrontational.

It is perfectly acceptable, however, to cite a draft paper that sits on somebody's web space. It does not need to be on arXiv to be cited.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I'm concerned, in part, for the *permanence* of Szelepcsényi's draft. (The presentation could also use a little polishing, though.) I have indeed deliberately copied much of the techniques of the draft, and even the structure of his presentation, but with constant citation to hammer home that it isn't original to me, and with some simplifications both for the sake of charity and concision. Is it your opinion, then, that the fact that it contains no original content (*i.e.* that the "added value" of my article is essentially only in the presentation) means that it is tantamount to plagiarism?  
> **username_8**: @NieldeBeaudrap No, plagiarism is not the issue.  Publishing somebody else's work without their *consent* is the issue.  
> **username_6**: I am a little disturbed by the assertion that relating someone else's proof in your own words with proper attribution is some sort of copyright infringement. Certainly if I was writing a monograph, I wouldn't have to contact every paper author whose work I am describing for permission, would I? I hope citation would suffice  
> **username_7**: I think a key point here is that there's an important difference between just putting someone else's work on arXiv (and similar acts), and making available a review or exposition of that work. As Sasho said, being able to recount the work of others is a key part of research and academic work.  
> **username_8**: @SashoNikolov Legally, if you publish a work that is based on some other work, you are liable to be sued unless you can demonstrate that there is sufficient new contribution of your own to make it your own creative work.  Academics normally don't go around suing people, but we would at least get upset and regard it as unprofessional conduct.  The OP is not writing a monograph.  He is attempting to publish his version of another author's work.  That is what the title of his question says.  
> **username_9**: @Uday Reddy: Copyright laws are quite different from country to country.  Which country’s law are you talking about?  
> **username_8**: @TsuyoshiIto. The US law is the one I am most familiar with.  The European laws are quite similar.  
> **username_6**: whether he's writing a monograph or not, he's doing what the writer of a monograph does: narrating someone else's proof in his own words, with proper citation. i seriously doubt that that constitutes copyright infringement (but i am willing to be disproved), and i fail to see what's unprofessional about it.  
> **username_9**: I think that the US copyright law is very different from European copyright laws in the treatment of fair use, which is relevant to the matter of legality of publishing someone else’s work.  But I am not familiar with either the US laws or the European laws.  

---

