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I want to create some PDFs that will help future university mathematics students to learn the material. I just started, literally 1 hour ago. I do not want to sell these PDFs but just make them available.

I make them with overleaf.com , and I write down all everything on my own. However these pdfs will contain only exercises (no theory), so clearly I can make some exercises up, but if I want to be exhaustive, I have to take exercises from books or lecture notes.

I take the text of the exercises, so for example $\textit{Use the definition of a field to prove that if F is a field then $\forall$ a $\in F$, $\, a\cdot 0 = 0 \cdot a = 0$.}$

However I do solve these exercises myself and write down my solutions. Of course for some exercises I'll look at the solutions and take inspiration from them, but always writing them down myself.

Do I have to quote (and ask permission!) to any source I take the exercises from? I.e. is there something like a copyright on exercises?

What I want to know is, if I do these pdfs with exercises, can I just avoid citing every source and put them available in my website?

Thank you

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    For lecture notes, surely the fastest way is to ask the author of the note (since you might be able to contact them quite easily, I suppose?) – 2017-01-21
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    When I saw "pdf" in the subject line, I thought this would be about probability density functions. – 2017-01-21
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    If you systematically take exercises from one textbook and publish their solutions on the Internet, I think that is unfair to the author of the textbook. There might be copyright issues if you directly quote the exercises word for word, but the main issue is ethical. It is not easy to construct really good exercises, and it is not fair to use someone else's work in a way that might decrease the value of the book from which you take it. If you take and slightly modify exercises from a variety of books, you would be on safer ground. – 2017-01-21
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    @user160738 the point is that I want to write down a very big collection of solved exercises, in the long run, my goal would be that at least every undergraduate could find most exercises done in classroom or homework (up to numbers of course) for their first 1-2 years of university. So I want to build a dense library (analysis, calculus, probability, statistics, etc). The number of sources would be enormous. Now I have selected the first 20 exercises and I already have 5 sources. – 2017-01-21
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    @MichaelHardy I feel you ahah – 2017-01-21
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    @BruceET yeah I thought about that. Especially the more I go to more advanced topics, the more the exercises must have been deeply prepared by authors. Actions which surely require a lot of effort. However how much should I modify them? For example, would just the numbers or constants be fine? What about "Analysis" exercises such as this one, which are very classic and there is not much else you can change about them? Should I try to change them or cite the source for them as well? Cause there are thousands of possible sources for each of these easy analysis exercises – 2017-01-21
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    If you can (and do) cite several sources for the same exercise, then I think you have the right to assume the exercise has become 'community' property. [In stat/probability: Something like finding the MLE for rate $\lambda$ based on $n$ exponential observations, or solving the item matching (derangement) problem.] – 2017-01-21
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    @BruceET okay I understand your point. Do you reckon there is an actual threshold or law (regulation? ) that gives you the ability to understand whether a given exercise needs to be cited or is part of this 'community' property? – 2017-01-21
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    I think copyright law says something about a certain number of consecutive words quoted exactly. Vague recollection. Google. – 2017-01-21
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    I doubt anyone can copyright problems that say things like "Find $43\times 31.$ But some of course they can. – 2017-01-21
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    I would like to ask: why exactly do you want to make this "dense library"? – 2017-01-21
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    @B.Pasternak because I have a new idea of university, my idea would be to contact Khan Accademy in the future. I won't share the details, but I believe with the method I have in mind people can study much much much faster and have a deeper understanding. So I want to create this as a foundation only, a comprehensive set of exercises is essential, although no Schauman's book, lecture notes or just book on the topic has a specialized and rich library of exercises – 2017-01-21

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