I never thought I’d write a blog post with a title mentioning Anthony D. Weiner. I saw a story about him in the New York Times. The first paragraph mentioned his helping an EMR company. So I tweeted the following tweet.
The mentioned EMR company rang a bell. Ahh! I remember them. Last year I got a Google alert for EMR and workflow. I found a blog post (see below, my content in red and vendor name blurred) describing a white paper I wrote in 2003 (Could You Do Me a Favor? “Electronic Medical Record Workflow Management: The Workflow of Workflow”) . For a decade it’s been at the top of the first page of search results returned by Google for the search terms EMR and workflow. The problem is, the blog post didn’t attribute the content to me. And it didn’t provide a link back to my white paper. I was a bit miffed.
Even the workflow wordle comes another of my blog posts. It comes from my The High-Performance Medical Home and Pediatric and Primary Care EMR Workflow Systems: Key Ideas. Again, not attributed. Not linked.
And then I just forgot about it. Until now. Coincidently, I recently saw an excellent presentation about Content Curation. Here are the key tweets. But the tweet I will focus on is the last one, about Curation Ethics. Hmm. I feel a teachable moment coming on…
Role of Curation in Marketing SLIDE @ @
— Charles Webster, MD()
Lisa Rhodes of and Pawan Deshpande () of Curata () gave an excellent overview of curating content on the web as a powerful form of marketing.
Content Curation Definition & Stages SLIDE @ @
— Charles Webster, MD()
They quoted ():
“A Content Curator is someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online.”
Great definition!
And there was this, Content Curation & Fair Use. Let’s see how the blog post fares!
Content Curation Curation & Fair Use SLIDE @ @
— Charles Webster, MD()
First of all, let me direct to you the blog post referenced by the slide.
Content Curation & Fair Use: 5 Rules to being an Ethical Content Curator
The following summarizes the five rules.
- Do not reproduce article in entirety.
- Limit yourself to articles directly relevant to your audience.
- Prominently identify source of article.
- Link to original source of article.
- Provide context/commentary for the material you use.
OK. The blog post did not reproduce my white paper in entirety. Check!
It limited itself (to the best of my knowledge) to my one white paper (well, plus the wordle from another of my blog posts). Check.
The blog post *does not* prominently identify my white paper or me. X! (Zzzzz! )
The blog post *does not* link to the original source of the blog post content. X! (Zzzzz! )
And did the blog post provide additional valuable valuable context and commentary? I don’t think so either.
I briefly considered contacting the blog author or EHR sponsor, but just didn’t think it was worth the effort. I was also irritated when that blog post displaced my white paper from the pole position in Google. But, I believed, correctly as it turns out, that Google would eventually figure out which content was a paraphrase of which content and which predated which. I’m back on top! At least for the moment, it’s a bit like playing the game King of the Hill, SEO-wise.
By the way, I intentionally did not mention in *this* blog post the EHR vendor associated with *that* blog post. That’s not its point.
Thank you for giving something to write about, Anthony D. Weiner.
P.S. Yes. I *am* aware of the irony. I used content without attributing it. If the author or sponsoring EHR vendor were to contact me, I’d be delighted to prominently attribute its source and provide a link to it. 🙂