What? Stealing is a thing in cartography? Let me unpack this, and offer some ideas to combat cartographic plagiarism.
Pablo Picasso is often credited with the quote “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” A good artist will see another artist’s style and emulate it as closely as they can. A great artist selects elements from other artists’ work and combines them into their own unique mix of elements. And even quotes can be stolen. Steve Jobs famously borrowed Picasso’s quote, and Banksy both stole it, and reworked it.
And we see this in cartography all the time because there’s rarely anything so new that it’s never been seen before. But where is the line between derivative mapping, and developing your own style? And does it matter?
I don’t think it particularly matters in most instances. Most maps are derivative and build upon other work, other maps, and styles and aesthetics that others have likely used. Sometimes a cartographer has seen something they like, other times perhaps not and they’ve simply happened upon a similar style. And the internet is awash with examples, tutorials, and how-tos which people quite rightly lean on to help them in their own endeavours. So, a great cartographer will learn from all of that material and use it to develop their own work. A good cartographer might simply replicate something. And that’s fine as long as the original work is cited because credit should always go where credit is due. But there is a third type of cartographer – the not-so-good cartographer.
While imitation is often the sincerest form of flattery, the not-so-good cartographer will take other people’s work and not cite it, and pass off their efforts as their own. This is nothing new and certainly not exclusive to cartography. Plagiarism exists in all forms of creative work. Even maps produced by national mapping agencies have had to develop ways of securing their work from plagiarism and copyright infringement through, for example, the inclusion of trap streets. But at an individual level plagiarism becomes problematic if the not-so-good cartographer is relying on the maps to get them a job, or win them a competition. And that means the interview panel, or the map judges need to be on the lookout. They need to be able to differentiate between the great, the good, and the not-so-good. And it’s not easy because no-one can possibly be aware of all that has gone before as a reference against which work purporting to be new and original is assessed.
I have some personal experience of this. As a member of a panel of judges for a map competition a few years ago a fellow judge had selected one stand-out map as their top pick, and set about explaining why it deserved to be a winner. They were right. It was a really good piece of work, and other judges agreed. Except I had to interject because I’d seen the map before. Not just a version of it but THE map. It was a complete replica of a map made by someone else, and which wasn’t credited. We might think of this as good cartography because the person had done a great job of making a faithful replica, and there’s value in learning how to apply certain techniques. Except this replica had been entered into a competition and that, to my mind at least, makes it not-so-good, bordering on duplicitous. I was able to bring up the original map on my phone to show the other judges and we agreed the map should not be rewarded.
I’ve seen this problem happen on a few other occasions when I’ve merely been a by-stander. But the problem is as much a product of the people looking at the maps as it is the not-so-good cartographers who make them. And how do you overcome that problem? Well, for interview and map judging panels, having multiple people and eyes will hopefully mean the pool of awareness is that much deeper and someone will recognise plagiarism. But there are other ways in which we can root such maps out.
When I was a University Professor we relied partly on our knowledge of books and journal papers to recognise when a student had plagiarised an essay, or large parts of an essay. Software then became a useful tool to tackle it and I used TurnItIn to cross-check student essays. It’s pretty incontrovertible when showing a student feedback that identifies huge chunks of plagiarised material that they copied and pasted into their work, particularly without citation. And we can do the same for images, including maps, for free, to provide a check in the process of assessing cartographic work.
A simple check on whether a map is truly original is to use Google Lens to take a quick picture and let it search for online matches. This is a great way to short-cut trying to uncover the veracity of a map. It’s a quick litmus test and will easily identify similar maps, perhaps those in a tutorial blog that might have simply been replicated. An alternative for online maps is to use Google’s reverse image search. Simply launch Google Images, then either paste the URL of the map image, or upload a copy of the map, and let Google search for possible matches.
It seems to me that this should be a mandatory step in the process of assessing a map when the map is being offered up in specific contexts such as in a portfolio for a job interview, or when entered in a competition. It behooves those viewing the map not to be duped. And if you’re entering work to be judged as your own, just be honest, and give yourself the creative freedom to draw upon a range of influences to make your work great.
Finally, here’s a spread from Cartography where I discuss Prior (c)art(e) and use (with permission) an illustration from Austin Kleon’s excellent book Steal like an artist that identifies the difference between good theft and bad theft in creative work.
By the way – was Picasso the first to utter those words. Probably not.