It recently came to our attention that one of our writers was reposting content from other sites without giving proper credits.  In our investigation we found that whole articles had been copied with limited or no references to the original source.  While some of these posts are actually press releases and are allowed to be reposted in total, it is not in our DNA to repeat things without adding something to the topic.

The majority of our writers come from academic backgrounds so we take the issue of plagiarism seriously.  We were not aware that this content was being copied, and upon discovering this we removed all posts by this author.  We have also implemented a copyright management system and we are working on hiring a senior editor to ensure this oversight does not happen again.  In our opinion, it’s just not cool.

We do of course syndicate several blogs or news sources but these posts are listed here under their original author or blog name with a direct link back to the source.  The purpose of this is to bring this information to a larger audience.  All of our syndicated feeds credit the original authors.

The issue of copyright on the internet is challenging.  Knowing when and where to cite and the method you use is challenging, we generally err on the side of caution but in this case it was a complete miss.  As an organization committed to educating hobbyists, we fully respect the content creators and will do everything possible to ensure that they receive full credit for their works.

Should you notice anything on our site that appears to violate standard copyright and citation processes, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] and we will immediately investigate.

Thank you again for your support.

-reefs.com