In the answer to  and  it is recommended that you cite an idea or useful answer for your research work on StackExchange. Now, if you have asked a question requiring a walk-back mathematical process (lets assume its a contribution) using fundamental knowledge to walk-back, if you do cite in this case, how do you keep the privacy of your account name? Since, people would check the answer and could look into the account history of the questioner and the answerer. Also, these StackExchange websites are linked and it seems that not everyone would like that for privacy reasons. So how could this be managed appropriately? Note: This is a modification of an existing question marked as duplicate.
35979
Sometimes we may ask questions on stack exchange or online forums wherein the response is helpful or even essential to a piece of work that gets published in an academic journal. If this occurs, how should credit be given to those involved in the exchange? Should they all be included as authors? Should a link to the forum be included as a reference in the paper?  Once something is in a stack exchange or forum, it's "published". Perhaps in the future, the current peer review model will transform into people writing blogs and posting in forums and databases. But for now, how might this issue be dealt with while forums, blogs, etc coexist with journals?
115722
I'm not sure if this question belongs here, how ever it is related with Stackoverflow (and me).  Recently, I had a chance to talk with Team manager in mobile company which name is irrelevant. He was asking me what I do, what do I study etc. I showed him some of my applications and he offered me to send him my CV or résumé ASAP.   I'm writing my CV right now. I have a paragraph where I state my contributions and projects, I wonder would it be good idea if I add my contribution towards StackOverflow community I do in free time? Would I exaggerate things? Will that information be relevant, regardless of my point of view and reckoning towards it?
76698
In a  on how to deal with submitting several papers on similar subjects at the same time, one of the (good) practices suggested by the answers is make sure that they cite each other, and that each result appears as original only in one of them.  One may want to put informative references from one to the other; for example:    paper A "An application of this result is in paper B";  paper B: "We apply this result from paper A".   From the point of view of providing all the relevant context to the reader, this might be the most informative thing to do. However, the other use of citations is for computing metrics, and in this respect this practice could be seen as a dishonest way to improve one's citation count, since you get two (self-)citations instead of the one you'd normally get if the two paper were not written simultaneously.  Hence, the question in the title: Is this practice recommendable and/or acceptable? Or should I decide an implicit temporal order for my simultaneous papers, and only cite older ones from newer ones?
105142
I'm starting to write a book on . Since I've been contributing on this tag for a long time, I had the opportunity to read &amp; answer several interesting threads on Stackoverflow related to this technology.  I would like to discuss some of the interesting cases published on Stackoverflow in my book, and I wonder if I could use the images and code shared on those threads in it.  I'm hoping somebody from StackExchange could clarify about the copyright status of the material shared on Stackoverflow questions/answers.
109755
Sometimes I find that I'll post an answer on an SO question that, for whatever reason -- probably luck, most of the time -- climbs to the top by votes, beating out other answers with equally (sometimes more) useful information.  At times like this I feel strangely obligated to also mention some of the same points made by those whose answers haven't received as many votes, just so that info doesn't get "lost" to someone who's only looking at the top-voted response for a quick answer.  I understand that the main purpose of SO is to provide good, thorough answers to technical programming questions; so I feel like this is the right thing to do. However, I also appreciate that many users (myself included) can get caught up in the rep game, which adds an element of fun to the site. So I always include links to the answers mentioned in cases like these, so that the user who originally made the point I'm repeating (hopefully) gets credit for it.  But the thing is, I suspect that simply by including that information in my own answer, I'm perhaps unfairly collecting even more votes for myself, simply by making my already top-voted answer that much more comprehensive.  So, my question is: which is better? Should you include references to others' answers in your own, effectively repeating what they've already said; or should you simply let those answers stand on their own, even if it means they might be more easily overlooked?
43092
Is it okay to repost a question from another Q&amp;A website/forum that was never answered there? Is that plagiarism?  I came across  that is very similar to a problem I am currently encountering, and would really like to see an answer/response. Would it b e appropriate to copy and paste that question into a question on Stack Overflow?
111730
I am thinking of making a site which will have a forum. I already have a lot of users (in an old forum, which I want to renew).  I like the Stack Exchange concept (voting, reputation, etc).  Can I build one of my own on my site? (I don't intend to copy any source code, just the concept itself.)  Is the concept patented or otherwise legally protected, or is it free to use?
1781
Suppose that I am doing a literature review on a topic, and I read paper A, which makes an interesting claim and references paper B as its source. Naturally, as paper B is then the primary source, I will look up B and possibly cite it in my own paper if it seems relevant. And suppose that it turns out that paper A says nothing else that's relevant for my topic, so I say nothing about paper A.  And this seems fine if I only discovered one citation from paper A. But if I find several useful citations in the same paper, it starts to feel like plagiarism if I just ruthlessly harvest it for citations without never citing itself.   Sometimes it's easy to work in a citation in such a case. For example, if it's a review paper I'm reading, I might be able to just write in my own paper something like:     Qwerty (2009) reviews a number of a results in this field, such as the finding that over 99% of the people who contract cancer wear shoes (Keyes 1999), that pink aliens from the sixteenth dimension dislike chocolate (Pinker 2001), ...   But often there isn't really any reasonable way to work in a citation, especially not if you wish the citation to make it clear that this is where you found useful sources from. I could include a footnote or a thanks in the acknowledgements, but I've never seen anyone do that for such a reason. Are there any rules of thumb regarding the correct etiquette in such situations?
49081
I was confused when I saw this Question with [Solved] in its title where I couldn't find a solution: .  Then I found out that the "[Solved]" part was put there by someone else through editing like these:       I was feeling that this was not how it's supposed to be done and searched meta to find, that it is indeed discouraged to do so:        But on the other hand, the user who did the edits has a whole lot of reputation so I might me missing something here. So what's the correct thing to do? Should those edits be reverted?
76765
Before I start my PhD I worked in a group that researched on the application of a particular area to a particular domain. No other research group published work in this area+domain. So I can safely say that my previous group is among the first if not the first to research in the application of that particular research area on that particular domain.   Now I find a paper published at an IEEE conference where a major part of its contribution is introducing a system that does something I did in a previously published paper, and it does it in the exact same way and even gives it the same name!   I know that some conferences could accept non-novel contributions. Also the paper talks about other aspects so I find it perfectly fine that this paper has been accepted and published. But what I find annoying is that they do not cite my relevant work which was published a year earlier and fairly visible online; A simple (unpersonalized) search on Google would show up at least three links to my work.   This is the second time I face this problem, but the first time this happened it was actually by the same group I worked with before; they published a related paper without citing the paper I co-authored with them.   I try to give the maximum possible exposure to my work by making it publicly available on my personal website, ResearchGate, making sure it appears on Google Scholar, etc..   I find it worrying that my work misses citations, I am keen on improving my h-index and citations count. So my questions are:   Is there anything I can do regarding that already-published paper?  Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening in the future?
64168
Recently, our group is trying to reproduce the result reported by a paper whose authors are from an Ivy league university. We are unable to reproduce the results because there are several implementation details are not mentioned in the paper. Hence, we decide to write the first author, who is now already a faculty member in another university, an email.  At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued. However, he simply ignored our email (3+ weeks, no response).  Then, we thought, OK, seems that he is reluctant to share the code, so let's just ask him to clarify several implementation details so that we can implement the thing ourselves and hopefully, we can reproduce the result. So, we sent a second email which very clearly asks for clarifications. Again, he ignored the email (1.5 weeks+, no response).  We now feel angry and start suspecting the authenticity of their reported results. However, we cannot accuse them of anything, since we are not able to prove that they cheated, which would be a felony if they really did.  We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being doubted. What they chose to do - ignoring our email - is really irresponsible.  What can we do?  Disclaimer  Thanks for the answers and comments! It is interesting that many start besieging me on my "bad" attitude in the email.   Just to clarify,    I wrote perfectly polite emails to the correspondence author; I have NOT questioned his results or whatsoever.
39160
I am new to Stack Overflow. I keep seeing so many beautiful posts/answers. It's really a great place for everyone getting to know about software programming. Lots of people post so much knowledge in terms of solutions and algorithms that may be proprietary/open source information.  The least amount of personal information I can provide is my email id, if I connect with Google, Facebook, etc. However, the email id itself reveals my association and the work I do.  This makes me believe that Personally Identifiable Information on Stack Exchange should be absolutely safe and not available to anyone, even the admins.   My concerns are:   Who can see my PII on SO? Is it safe from attacks?   Note:  It may be a paranoid / unimaginable aspect associated with how Stack Overflow works, but I think those who want to break things find ways to do it in unimaginable ways. Most people have work place information available publically on linkedin / facebook / google. Not all will use open id, hence the question.
49926
It has been discussed before, but in light of some of the , I can't help but wonder what is accomplished by displaying the author of a given question or answer.  There is a , but if anything, I don't think it goes far enough.  If questions and answers are supposed to stand on their own merit, why do we need to show the author at all?  I'm not proposing any change to the way rep works; rep should still be accrued and abilities gained.  The only difference is that questions and answers would appear anonymous.  Does this better reflect the goals of SO?  If so, how far do you think the anonymity should be taken?  If not, what shortcomings am I missing?
91582
An answer on Stack Overflow was recently brought to my attention as possible plagiarism, but I determined that the source of the suspected plagiarism was actually written and posted by the answerer elsewhere and later copied over to Stack Overflow verbatim.  The question  seems to cover the opposite scenario, where someone might want to copy their Stack Exchange answer onto another SE question or elsewhere on the Internet.  Is this an acceptable practice?  I am assuming:   That the answerer has permission to post the answer here, either because they never gave up the rights to the content or they have retained enough rights to also post it here. That the answer is at least minimum quality and makes an effort to answer the question (that is, it's not simply a rant from the answerer's blog, or random ponderings with nothing to do with the question asked).   In response to Anne Daunted's question, no, they did not disclose that they were copying over content that they had previously written and posted elsewhere. It got brought to chat as a possible plagiarism to be flagged. I investigated and declined to flag, commenting instead that it looked ok enough to not be flagged for summary deletion by a moderator. Instead, I decided it would be best to leave it to voters to decide how useful it is.  While this question is inspired by something that happened on Stack Overflow, it belongs here because it is relevant to every site, and there is no obvious reason that such a policy is or should be different across the network.
114799
If I have taken an idea or quote from somewhere I will of course reference it properly. However my question is every time I mention someone e.g  'Joe Bloggs said..."  do I need to reference every time I mention that person if I have referenced him at least once?  Or if I say 'this proof is given by xyz book'  if I have ready referenced xyz book do I need to reference it every-time I mention the name of the book?
38725
When learning a new subject, I would frequently use lecture notes found somewhere in the Internet. When writing a paper (or a master thesis, as in my case, but the rules should be similar, I believe) one should give some reference for used results which are not common knowledge, if I understand correctly. This make me wonder: what do I do if I want to reference a result I found in some notes?  The natural thing to do would be to just add these notes to bibliography. What format would be preferable for this? Note that there will generally not be much publishing information, perhaps not even a definite year and place. (A BibTeX template would be .)  Secondly, is it OK to cite such materials as a reference?
44207
I've seen a similar thread for  and a question concerning the very feature I mean in  but no actual suggestion. I decided to post one in order to see if other users agree that such a feature would be of use and also to find out if it would be technically feasible (requiring a sane amount of code modification).  Among the comments on Stack Overflow (and other SE sites), there are some genuine gems. Be it a piece of advice, a suggestion or just a hilarious remark, a comment is sometimes worth returning to.  While I know how to bookmark the comments in my browser, I find this pretty annoying while switching computers (it's hard to keep sync between different browsers). I'd like to keep them in one place, preferably in my SO profile.  Personally, I'd love and use a feature like this. What do you think about it?