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The article copy vs snippet aspect of this has probably been discussed many times, you can probably find some of those discussions by scrolling though the Content, Writing and Copyright Forum [webmasterworld.com] index.
Personally, I'd rather write a snippet or short summary in my own words and link to the site where the whole article is posted.
If an article is worth posting a copy of it's pretty hard to argue that the site where it is first posted isn't worth linking to.
Copyright is also an issue in this stuff, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm going to avoid that discussion in any detail when it comes to copying other peoples work without permission.
I can say I wouldn't look kindly on someone copying my work in whole and republishing it without permission.
As far as which is better from a SEM perspective, I'd guess that the best would be to write a complete article of your own, that way others who thought it was good could link to your page.
Website A sells equipment that website B has an article on how to use the equipment. Website C has an article pertinent to the industry, news etc. Given permission by the author, we have chosen to duplicate both articles on our site by creating a page for each article. On the product pages and sometimes on the home page we have placed a snippet and link to that article page of ours.
My theory is that a search engine would prefer the link go to the original site. I see far too often websites in the top of the serps with links to other sites as additional resources and never any reprinted. The idea is to be a resource, right? What's more resourceful, duplicating content or providing quality outbound links? I would guess the second but I'm looking for some feedback/wisdom.
.... as long as....
they don't end up thinking the page being linked to represents duplicate content.
And that is where any trouble might occur. I don't know anyone who has definite answer on how much duplication a SE might tolerate before applying some penalty. I've seen numbers bounced around anywhere from needing 25 to 50% unique on page content to avoid a penalty. I tend to think the number is somewhere between the two.
Depending on how long the article is, it might, or might not, be safe to assume that the standard sitewide content (navigation links, etc) on your page might be enough to avoid any penalty. I wouldn't trust that alone if it were me though.
I'd be inclined to add some comments of my own to the page the article appears on. For example, comment in your own words on what the article says on that page.
Of course the longer the article, the harder it might be to add enough content to offset any possible duplication issues.
In that case, breaking the article into multiple pages might be of some benefit.
Here's a word of caution.
If you link to the page where the content originally appeared from the page that you are republishing it on.... you are feeding the SEs a direct line to the duplicated content. I'd link to some other page on the originating site, like the home page of the other site.
I'd guess that linking to the other sites is going to carry the same weight whether it's a straight link to an article, or a link giving credit for a reprinted article.
