Universitätsbibliothek - MIKA
4.3 Citation
Universitätsbibliothek - MIKA 
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Citation

The crucial question now is: Is it permitted to cite from elaborations protected by copyright law within the composition of an academic paper? Yes, this is permitted!

Citations, which have to be indicated as those, are also permitted from elaborations protected by copyright law as long as those serve for the explanation of own contents, which means for establishing a relation between the own and the other (cited) statement or for using them as evidence for the own statement.

Citations are always based on intellectual property of another person.

According to proper academic working it has to be transparent from which sources a citation had been taken.

If you do not indicate a citation, you commit an infringement of intellectual property (plagiarism). This is not only an infringement of the rules of proper academic work but also of legal regulations (copyright law), if applicable.

In general, all statements and wordings of others which you use for your own academic work but of whom you are not the author.

In practice, this means all contents taken from other sources. In this respect, it is not relevant whether they are published (printed/ electronic media, internet etc.) or not-published (e.g. documents in archives).

Mika Hint

It makes sense to proceed according to the principle “preferably once too often than too little”: This means that in case of doubt e.g. the own statements are only vaguely similar to those of others, it is recommendable to indicate those as citations.

Although there is existing a DIN-norm for citations, there are also differing regulations according to the subject. In the case that you did not get documents regarding the citation regulations of your subject, it is recommendable to consult the lecturers of the related courses within which the own paper is written in this respect!

Basically, the following applies: indications of sources, from which you cite, which means from which you take statements from others for your own text or to which you refer (indication of source), have to be retrievable easily afterwards. In case of sources from the internet, the citation should additionally always include also the date at which the link indicated was accessed the last time.

Indirect citation: By this, statements from other persons are reproduced by won words. To the indication, showing from where the respective statement was taken, is normally added a prefix word (cf., see etc.) to the general indication of the source.

Direct citation: By this, you take statements of others word-by-word from their text. The text passages copied have to be indicated in the own text by quotation marks. The indication of source contains normally no prefix word (s.a.). In an oral presentation, a statement directly taken from another person can be indicated by an announcement citation (+ name of the author, if applicable).

Mika Hint

It is recommendable to use direct citations economically. The direct citation should be selected as presenting from only in the case that it is particularly characteristic for the own line of thoughts and/or in the case that the idea could not be better expressed by own words. The word-by-word reproduction of long text passages should be avoided!

In order to prevent an attempt of deception or academic misconduct, AI-generated contents should always be indicated. In this context, on the one hand respective provisions in examination regulations, guidelines for good scientific practice as well as guidelines of the university, the professorship or the lecturer should be observed (cf. Salden and Leschke 2023, p. 29). The ETH Zurich has developed a template on how the usage of AI-tools for scientific papers may be documented in a table.

On the other hand, also the licensing and usage conditions of the respective tools should be checked whether they include an obligation for indication of the service. Whether the indication of AI-generated contents is made by a classical citation or by an indication of auxiliaries at the beginning or the end of the paper depends on the particular case. (cf. Salden and Leschke 2023, p. 29)

Mika Hints for reading