After all those papers, how do I not know how to reference this?

August 28, 2012 1:05 PM

Having some difficulties with figures and my MSc thesis. Help?

In acknowledging that a figure was used from another source, I've repeatedly seen "reproduced with permission" or "taken with permission". Is this exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin (emailing the source for permissions) or is this referring to taking a figure from an accessible publication and referencing the usage in the back of the thesis?

For one of my figures, I simply (well, not simply) purified up a batch of protein and handed it off to an associate professor who very kindly fixed it and ran it through the TEM for me, given that I'd not need to repeat the experiment, that I didn't have radioactivity training (uranyl acetate staining), and that it was a damn expensive instrument that I had no business touching. How do I acknowledge this in the methods section?

I apologize if this was easily google-able, I've not been able to get a clear cut answer from my weakened google-fu.

posted by Slackermagee to education (9 answers total)

1) Yes, you should usually get permission to copy a figure wholesale from another source. That means asking. Otherwise you can just refer to the data and source the figure without showing it.

2) The methods section generally doesn't represent who did what, does it? Write up how it was done, not who did it, and thank the professor in acknowledgements.
posted by brainmouse at 1:08 PM on August 28, 2012

Exactly what brainmouse said. Only thing that I could think to add - if your professor who ran the TEM has a methods paper or some such on his exact process you should cite that.
posted by McSwaggers at 1:17 PM on August 28, 2012

re: Using other peoples figures

Yes, email them and ask for permission. If you want to use figures from a journal article contact the journal. Since the issue is copyright I've been told you can recreate their figure (draw your own, or create your own graph based on someone's data) and then cite the source without getting permission. Creative commons work and works of the US Federal Government should not require getting permission to use, although of course you cite.

Re: Methods section.

I'd write something like "protein fixation was performed using the Department of X's TEM system with the help of Dr. X." Then also say really nice things about Dr. X in the acknowledgements section.
posted by pseudonick at 1:19 PM on August 28, 2012

Hi. I handle permissions for my workplace. We create a lot of charts and graphs and figures. Some of them are explicitly labeled with language like "If you want to use this, you are free to do so if you don't alter it in any way and if you include all the notes/source language, and credit it to us."

Other things, people email me about. I like to know which chart/graph/figure and from what publication of ours it came from (telling me that, for instance, you want to use the chart from our Medicare fact sheet is useless, because we have a lot of different fact sheets on Medicare), and what you're going to use it for. I say yes to 99.9% of requests, and we don't charge for reprints.
posted by rtha at 1:24 PM on August 28, 2012

Yeah...ask Dr. X about his/her specific methods or parameters section for publications. I run a similar operation (where I have instrumentation that students use) and we have a web page where we stash a lot of the info students should use when reporting data from our instruments in their papers.

Depending on the journal, you can use portions of articles without explicit permission if it is being used in a thesis. Each journal has its own rules. As far as books go, I'd say email the publisher? In the front of my thesis, since I had reproduced journal articles that'd I'd already published, I included all of the permissions for reprinting the articles. Only one journal did I have to actually fill out a form. (Of course, I'd already written these papers, so it's a little different in your case.)
posted by sararah at 2:49 PM on August 28, 2012

1 - ask a librarian, or your course teaching coordinator. It will depend on the source, your school's exam regulations and your location. For example, for a submission for examination, in my location, and as long as the figure does not comprise >5% of the published work, permission does not need to be sought. Publication would be quite different.

2 - again, check your exam regs. You might want to deviate from a "pure" methods section to make it clear in the text that you did not actually do the visualisation.
posted by cromagnon at 3:25 PM on August 28, 2012

Yes what brain mouse said. One of my figures was created by a friend with a mat lab script, and I mentioned in the methods how it was done, and full credit to my friend in the acknowledgements.
posted by dhruva at 3:41 PM on August 28, 2012

Simplest method of reusing a figure is to recreate it and cite in the figure legend (and references) as "modified from Author et. al., Important Journal, yyyy issue(vol):pp." I've done this, even with my own figures when I was concerned about permissions to reproduce one of my own images originally published elsewhere.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:01 PM on August 28, 2012

If you use published figures and graphs, you must request permission.

How? It depends on the journal.

When you're viewing the html article, <ctrl>f search for "permission." Many journals will go through rightslink. Just select "permission to reuse in thesis" and click through. It's almost always free and you get an automated email saying you asked for and got permission to use blah that you then print out and keep on file. Most universities don't require you to include them in your thesis, but most request that you keep these documents.

Other journals have their own version that are basically the same.

Some open access sites tell you how to exactly attribute.

Other journals will require the author to request permission to use their own published figures. Some of these journals even ask you to pay them for this right.

Likewise, depending on the journal the author isn't necessarily the rightsholder.
posted by porpoise at 7:29 PM on August 28, 2012