Re:Thoughts (Score 1)

Thanks for your comments.

When it come to copyrighted or permissionable material, we actually have a whole team of people whose job it is to make sure we're not stealing someone else's thoughts and ideas. If something is considered public domain, then so be it - but if it is not, we ask permission to use references, research, quotes, etc. Sometimes we have to pay to use these materials, and sometimes they're just granted. More often than not, colleague research papers are allowed to be cited or discussed free of charge.

As for your other point, I don't doubt that this is happening. And of course in grad level courses profs are not using our textbooks, but not necessarily for the reasons you think. The number of actual books available for upper level academia are limited as this is not what the large textbook publishers specialize in. That's more for university presses. We market for the core undergraduate, and, quite frankly, I have but a handful of books that would even be appropriate for grad level or PHD studies. If you find your prof using a textbook, they usually are doing so to give a foundation or basic overview.