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I am reading a mathematics textbook (which one is irrelevant, and I do not wish to insult the author if (s)he happens to be reading this). One section relies quite a bit on an appendix and results from several other places, including farther in the book, which leads to a bit of circularity.

In the process of reading it and unwinding it I've decided to rewrite the entire thing, unroll it into a single cohesive section and resolve the singularity, while keeping the content (with a few patches and filled-in holes) essentially the same. It's a total of about 40 pages in the book, but 15-20 unwound.

Obviously me producing this document on my own is just note-taking, and publishing such a thing is silly, but is something in-between acceptable to the community? That is, polishing the document and hosting it on my (public but not well-known) website.

Even with attribution, would this be considered plagiarism? Or even if not, would it be considered rude? I'm a third year graduate student, just barely entering this community, and this seems the best place to ask about social norms within it.

Apologies if this is considered off-topic, but it seems to be related to publishing and plagiarism, which are topics occasionally taken up by this forum.

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    $\begingroup$ Plagiarism usually means direct copying of a text without attribution. In general there's nothing wrong with putting your own spin on old material, and people so it all the time, with varying leeks of spin. As long as attributions of results are there, no one can really complain. $\endgroup$
    – Ben Webster ♦
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 3:40
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    $\begingroup$ What you are suggesting, with attribution included, is a public service. All it needs is a few sentences up-front about "These are my own notes distilled from [Book]" and "No originality is claimed, except possibly in Lemma 4, which obviates [Book, Lemmas 5,6,7]". $\endgroup$
    – Allen Knutson
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 3:44
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    $\begingroup$ Cry Madoc, and let slip the Leeks of Spin ... $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 3:53
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    $\begingroup$ Of course, using proper wording and attribution to indicate that your intent is to provide another point of view to help you and others understand the material, these things are advisable. After you have written it, you might inform the textbook author of your efforts as a courtesy. Done properly ( and with guidance from your advisors ), this may lead to opportunities and connections which may serve you well later in your career. Or not. Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.08.22 $\endgroup$
    – Gerhard Paseman
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 4:00
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    $\begingroup$ Also, while similar questions have been asked before on MathOverflow, often the answer is "ask your advisors/mentors". The chief reason is that the answer often depends on locale. Your university might have policies in place which forbid or restrict this kind of action, or at the least require some formal disclaimer. Definitely not an ideal question for MathOverflow, according to some parts of the community. Gerhard "But I Like The Question" Paseman, 2011.08.22 $\endgroup$
    – Gerhard Paseman
    Commented Aug 23, 2011 at 4:07

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This question was asked a long time ago, but remains on the unanswered queue. I agree with Allen Knutson's comment that this is good thing to do (i.e., write up such notes and post them on your webpage) and that it's a public service rather than plagiarism. In fact, it's extremely common. Many professors post lecture notes, either for seminar talks or for semester long courses. Here are a few examples off the top of my head:

http://personal.denison.edu/%7Ewhiteda/expository.html

https://people.math.binghamton.edu/malkiewich/

https://people.math.harvard.edu/~lurie/252x.html

http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/469/notes.pdf

https://archive.org/details/Prof_Thomas_Ward___Topology_Lecture_Notes

Many times, these notes were distilled from some other source, rewritten in a way that made more sense to the author of the note, and that might help a reader of the original source. Additionally, there are projects online for translating works, like this one: https://github.com/ryankeleti/ega

As long as there is proper attribution, no one will view it as plagiarism. Furthermore, I think posting things like this on your webpage can help you get a job, at least at a small liberal arts college (and maybe as a postdoc, if you need to show some scholarly activity beyond your publication record as a PhD student), because it shows active engagement with the research literature, it shows that you care about lowering bars to entry to your field, and it shows that you can write and explain things in a clear way.

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  • $\begingroup$ Another point is that sometimes relevant results become known after a book is already published, but would have fit perfectly with the book. In situations like that, it can be a service to write a note explaining how those new results fit into the framework of the book. Some of the examples above are like that. $\endgroup$
    – David White
    Commented Mar 31 at 16:26
  • $\begingroup$ I agree that no mathematician would consider this plagiarism. But whether a commercial publisher would consider it a potential copyright violation is another matter, and one worth taking seriously if you intend to distribute the reworked notes widely. $\endgroup$
    – Sam Hopkins
    Commented Mar 31 at 22:01

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