--- On Sun, 5/12/13, Екатерина Лукашева <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have a question on publishing models in origami-journals. > Suppose I invented something. And it's known that it had > been definitely > invented before. Let it be, for example Tornillo model as a > well-known > modular =). Suppose that I made it truly independent. But at > the moment of > publishing I also know about it had been 100% invented > before. > The question: > 1) is it ethic to send it to any of the origami journals? > 2) is it ethic to put my name to such the diagrams? > 3) (the question to editors): will you ever accept such > thing? (if you know > that Tornillo is already invented) > > If I publish smth in the book, I should get a permission of > an author and > put his(her) name to the model and it will be ok. But what's > with journals? > Don't they act more like scientific journals where the first > is the only?
Hi Ekaterina, I am not a creator myself, but I'm trying to see this with a bit of common sense. Why would you want to publish something that has already been invented? If it's been invented but not published, then you may want to reach the first author and discuss with him the way to go (he may accept co-authorship or not). If it's been invented *and* published, why would you want to publish it again? There may be some legal (copyright) implications, and there are people out there who may give you advice, I'm just viewing this from the practical point of view. However, if you invented something that is slightly different from another model that you later found similar, well, then maybe it's a different model and you can go publish it under your name. Having said that, here is the caveat: complex models that evolve over time. The tracking of authorship in complex models has recently been considered in an excellent article by J.C. Nolan which I recommend you reading. http://origamiusa.org/thefold/article/six-intersecting-pentagrams-diagrams-and-puzzle-its-genealogy He starts by looking at a model that puzzled him as having several "authors". "It's fascinating how there are so many examples and occurrences of models being designed simultaneously by different people who were neither working together nor even aware of each other." But that's the case of complex models, for which he concludes it may be difficult to give a single attribution. He says: "I recall waaaay back in the day when I was writing video games that a given game was written by ONE person and one could make statements such as "I LOVE the work of Silas Warner." But as games (and budgets) expanded in scope this shifted and it became teams of people rather who created the work: artists, programmers, writers, producers, etc. And, perhaps, as things evolve in origami this will become the case as well and models will require credits rather than a simple attribution." Laura Rozenberg Managing Editor The Paper OrigamiUSA
