Archive for May, 2013
Statement on Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials in Stinson’s Police Integrity Research
The research project includes an integrated relational database of digital images of news articles and court records, websites, and other material from the Internet, such as audio and video files of television news reports related to the cases of interest. The media and communication products are important raw data for criminological and communication research. The data are archived for current and future research projects of the principal investigator, Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D., Ph.D., including but not limited to an ongoing study of police integrity funded by the National Institute of Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice.
We employ a range of scholarly methods, including quantitative and qualitative textual and content analyses, experiments, case studies, and historical analysis that may involve comparison of media processes and productions. All of the research may well employ copyrighted material. Pursuant to copyright law it is fair use to (1) create topically based collections as described herein for scholarly use, and (2) store copyrighted materials in collections and archives for an indefinite period of time. From time to time (at the sole discretion of the principal investigator) access to the database archives is made available to scholars and students who wish to access these collections for related research projects.
Fair use applies to personal archiving of copyrights material for scholarly purposes, either immediately or within a set of ongoing research interests, with the expectation of allowing scholarly consultation of it by others, both within the disciplines of criminology and communication, and on an interdisciplinary basis. This research project adheres to the standards promulgated by the Center for Social Media’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication. Fair use of any copyrighted materials in the collection, database and archives is subject to the following limitations:
(1) Materials included in the collection are related to the research interests of the project’s principal investigator, Philip Matthew Stinson, Sr., J.D., Ph.D.
(2) Material archived in reliance on fair use is intended only for scholarly use, including functions as explaining scholarship results to others and distribution of scholarly results.
(3) The collection, database, and archives will be maintained only until the principal investigator no longer holds the research interests that motivate the collection, or until the collection no longer is required to support published research based on items in it. At that point, the collection will either be destroyed or donated to either an institutional archive or to other scholars pursuing similar research interests. Maintenance of the collection may involve, as appropriate, format migration and back-up copying.
(4) A policy will be developed to open the collection of archived material to others at a later date aimed at limiting access to scholars doing research in the relevant area and establishing appropriate limitations on the purposes to which the materials will be put.
(5) All archived material will be clearly marked as to its source, and whenever possible metadata associated with that material will be preserved.