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Plagiarism by Academics

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Professor, A.N.U. , U.N.S.W., Uni. of Hong Kong

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/...

Plag0602.html (PostPrint), Plag0506.html (PrePrint), and Plag-ANU-060422.ppt (Slide-Set)

Published in J. Assoc. Infor. Syst. 7, 2 (February 2006) http://jais.isworld.org/articles/default.asp?vol=7&art=5

ANU DCS26 April 2006

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Plagiarism is easy, right ?

It’s simply theunattributed incorporation

of the work of others

Case: About 70% of a recent conference paper was copied almost exactly, without quotation

marks.The matter was reported to the author’s Dean.

The author was subjected to severe punishment.

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Origins and Applicability• Etym. Latin plagiarius – a kidnapper, stealer, or

abductor of a slave or child (Enc. Brit. 1911 ed.)• Etym. Greek plagion – a kidnapping (OED)• First occurrence 1621 (OED)• In common usage by the mid-18th century

• A Renaissance notion, that:• did not exist in the times of monkish scriptoria• has doubtful applicability in collectivist

cultures:• ‘East Asian’ / Confucian?• ‘bees around a honey-pot’ ePublishing?

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Plagiarism in Journalism• Code of the AJA (a Division of the Media,

Entertainment and Arts Alliance): "Do not plagiarize". The draft replacement states:"Plagiarism is stealing. Always attribute fairly"

• The 1,000-word Code of the U.S. Society for Professional Journalists says "Never plagiarize"

• The leading Australian Professor of Journalism, and author of a work on Ethics in Journalism, can offer little more than that

• But plagiarism is how all low-grade journalism works

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For the likes of the NYT, however, it can be an issue

6 June 2003

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Plagiarism in Creative Lit and Entertainment

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'The Idol House of Asarté' (1928) and 'The Circle' (2005)

• A recent Australian short story closely paraphrased the plot of an Agatha Christie tale, and closely paraphrased the text too

• It shifted the setting from Dartmoor to Tasmania, and changed the murder weapon from an ancient dagger to an aboriginal flint

• This made the front page of The Australian• The author compounded her sin by denying

plagiarism, when she could have easily invoked ‘allusion’ and ‘homage’

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Murray Bail’s

‘Eucalyptus’• A 90,000-word novel• He was criticised in the

SMH for 180 words which were “eight ‘direct lifts’ from … an out-of-print textbook ‘Eucalypts Vols 1 and 2’”

• Bail explained how it happened, and said he had asked his publisher to include an acknowledgement in future editions

http://www.cuyamaca.net/oh170/...Thumbnail_Pages/...

Eucalyptus_sideroxylon.asp

(to you and me, ironbark)

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Plagiarism in Entertainment and Music

• Mills & Boon commissions novels from many willing and heavily mutually-plagiarising authors

• Genres like 'reality TV' and variants of 'Idol’• Cartoonists mutually and self-plagiarise• Music 'sampling' and ‘mixing’

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“Abba learnt from the Beatles and Phil Spector who studied Chuck Berry, Little Richard

and Motown, who knew all the tricks of Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter who cut their teeth on

the minstrel shows and vaudeville musicals who were indebted to Stephen Foster

who got everything he knew from now long forgotten folksters, troubadours,

balladeers, doggerelists busking outside his window”

(Valentine, 2005, but quoting an unnamed criticin the BBC TV series ‘Walk On By: The Story ofPopular Song,’ produced in 2001)

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Plagiarism in Education

• Educators have been hardening their hearts against plagiarism by students, particularly at the undergraduate level

• Guidelines, rules (Yanqui 'Honor Codes'), search-tools, processes, sanctions

• It’s serious: ICAC investigated a case at the Uni of Newcastle; and the VC departed

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http://info.anu.edu.au/policies/Codes_Of_Practice/...Students/Other/Academic_Honesty.asp

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But there are Concerns ...

"despite all the work done in print culture studies, all the history of authorship that demonstrates the historical contingency of categories like plagiarism and originality, all the hypertext theory and experience that demonstrates the permeability of all notions of the author (whether on line or off), in our classrooms we continue to sustain notions of plagiarism inherited from Romantic literary theory and current-traditionalist rhetorical theory"

(Howard, 1998)

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An Interim Conclusion

• The strong emphasis on plagiarism in the Google era presents a moral dilemma for academics

• Standards are being imposed on students, in some cases resulting in severe sanctions

• But the standards imposed by academics on themselves are much lower, or at least can be perceived by students to be much lower

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Schneier’s Crypto-Gram Newsletter1 August 2005

‘Plagiarism and Academia: Personal Experience’

“A paper published in the December 2004 issue of the SIGCSE Bulletin, ‘Cryptanalysis of some encryption/cipher schemes using related key attack’, by Khawaja Amer Hayat, Umar Waqar Anis, and S. Tauseef-ur-Rehman, is the same as a paper that John Kelsey, David Wagner, and I published in 1997.It's clearly plagiarism. Sentences have been reworded or summarized a bit and many typos have been introduced, but otherwise it's the same paper. It's copied, with the same section, paragraph, and sentence structure -- right down to the same mathematical variable names. It has the same quirks in the way references are cited. And so on.”

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The Legal Framework in Australia

“To plagiarise shall be understood to mean the presentation of the documented words or ideas of another as his or her own, without attribution appropriate for the medium of presentation. ... A researcher or reviewer shall not intentionally or recklessly ... plagiarise”

AVCC/NH&MRC ‘Statement and Guidelines on Research Practice’, May 1997, again on the AVCC

site(but omitted from the draft Research Code of

2005!?)

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Elements of the AVCC Definition(1) publication: the presentation of another person's

material, work, or idea. The new work is made available to others; i.e. personal notes are not at issue

(2) content: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea. Some part of the new work is derived from someone else’s prior or contemporaneous work

(3) appropriation: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea as one's own. An express or implied claim of originality

(4) lack of credit given: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea as his or her own, without appropriate attribution. The reader is not made aware of the originator, nor of the location of the work in which it was originally published

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Why Plagiarism is ‘A Bad Thing’

• Ethics [But Mark Twain’s outloook was that copying of books for commercial purposes was theft, whereas plagiarism was just 'bad manners']

• Instrumentalism, i.e. less fit academics get advancement (promotion, research grants)

• ‘It’s a crime’ [It very likely is not, although it may be actionable in a civil jurisdiction]

• ‘It’s a breach of copyright’ [That’s a distinct question, orthogonal to plagiarism]

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Counter-Argument 1Practicality for Authors

• It’s impractical to avoid repetition• It’s uneconomic for every author to deliver

originality in every element of everything he or she writes

• It’s a waste of time and energy that could be applied to more constructive activities

Hence:• Common knowledge, ideas in the public

domain and easily found, well-known quotations, do not need to be attributed

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Counter-Argument 2Practicality for Readers

• Citations clutter text• Long reference lists take up space• Defensive wording makes for turgid

style• Editorial adjustments interfere with

readability, e.g.• omissions signalled by ellipsis (…)• corrections signalled by [] and/or

sic

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Counter-Argument 3Imitation has a Vital Role in Learning

• Demonstration / Explanation / Imitation

• Questions that are capable of being answered directly from existing publications invite plagiarism

• Questions therefore need to encourage candidates to discover and use the old, but then contribute something new

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Counter-Argument 4Imitation has a Vital Role in Innovation

Articulation

Tacit

Knowledge

Codified

Knowledge

re Artefact

and Process

Artefact

Codified

Knowledge

re Artefact

and Its Use

Manufacturing

and

Documentation

Processes

The Innovative Organisation

Artefacts

Codified

Knowledge

re Artefacts

and Their Use

‘Prior

Art’

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Counter-Argument 5Plagiarism is Culturally-Dependent

• monastic scriptoria copied Scripture and secular works

• oral traditions value it (e.g. Middle Ages bards, sagas, and the lore of aboriginals in many continents)

• "the American oral preaching tradition ... of widespread borrowing from unacknowledged sources" (re Martin Luther King's PhD thesis)

• the genre ‘novel’ was originally criticised for uttering what the 'literary critics' of the early 18th century perceived as nothing more nor less than a sustained lie

• the idea ‘plagiarism’ reflects a strong emphasis on the worth of individuals, deriving from the rinascimento

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Case Study: A Text-Book• A student wrote to the VC

of an Aust. Uni., alleging plagiarism by a staff-member in a textbook used at that university

• The investigator used the AVCC definition, sought guidance in the literature (with very little success), devised a method, and defined evaluation criteria for plagiarism in a textbook

• Investigations were conducted to enable findings as to the facts

• The evaluation criteria were applied to the facts

• The results were provided to the VC

• The staff-member was formally censured. The person’s contract expired and was not renewed

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Evaluation Criteria for Plagiarism in a Textbook

• Presentation:• avoid citations intruding• avoid claims of originality• provide access to key works• avoid quotation marks

• verbatim, near-verbatim and close-paraphrase passages impose higher expectations in relation to attribution

• well-known authors, quotations can be handled using generic attributions

• Attribution, using one of:• Harvard-style citation• numbered footnotes / endnotes• attribution in notes at the end

of each chapter, perhaps with a key to the page number and line number

• mention of author at the start of the relevant segment or within the segment, and reference at the end

• mention in the Preface or Intro of authors and works used as sources during the preparation of the book

• Reference to all cited works:• Further Reading, Recommended

Reading or Primary Sources List at the end of each chapter or section

• a single, comprehensive Reference List at the end of the book

• a Bibliography at the end of the book, which contains works drawn on during the preparation of the book and other works

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The Pragmatics of Publishing: Necessary or Inherent

Plagiarism• Segments with an expository purpose, in particular ...• Recitation of existing bodies of theory

• 'use one's own words', but be faithful to the sources• Explanation of the research method used, the

rationale for the selection of particular techniques, and applications of those techniques rather than others

• how many ways can you phrase "Responses were gathered using a 5-point Likert scale"?

• Reporting of research results• "The data supported the hypothesised relationships,

in all cases in a statistically significant manner"

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Implications of ‘Institutionalised’ Plagiarism

• At least in particular segments of formal papers, repetition of stock phrases, paraphrasing and generic attributions are all tolerated

• Academics tacitly permit one another to indulge in practices that would otherwise be castigated as plagiarism

• Students might not appreciate that academics have good reason to permit one another latitude that appears to be denied in students' assignments

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The Five Determinants ofthe Seriousness of an Act of

Plagiarism

• Was the act intentional or accidental?• What is the nature of the new work?• To what extent was originality

expressly or implicitly claimed in the new work?

• What is the nature of the incorporated material, and to what extent is there evidence of ‘value-add’?

• What is the nature of the attribution?

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A Test of the Five Determinants of

the Seriousness of an Act of Plagiarism

Criterion• Intentionality• Nature of

Work• Originality

Claim• Nature of

Incorp’d Material

• Nature of Attribution

‘Eucalyptus’• Accidental• A Novel• Limited

or None• 180 words ,

near-verbatim, technical

• None, then an Acknowledgmt

Schneier Case• Intentional• Refereed

Paper• Implied Claim

of Originality• Large amounts

of verbatim text, and structure

• None

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Implications of the Recognition of Degrees of Seriousness of

Plagiarism

• Serious plagiarism such as 'plagiarism of authorship' aka 'appropriation of entire works' is harmful to academic endeavour. Misconduct of that nature requires action for deterrence, and for signal-value

• But many instances of plagiarism are errors or mis-judgements appropriately addressed in simple ways, e.g. through apology, amendment of the digital ‘original’ of the work, or publication of an errata notice, and not perceived or represented as ‘misconduct’ warranting disciplinary measures

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ImplicationsResponsibilities

• Authors of Content• Readers of Content• Employers, through

Contracts, Codes• Professional / Discipline

Associations, at least through Codes

• Tribunals and Courts• Teachers• Journal Editors ...

Process Matters• Natural Justice Reqmts

• Fairness/Balance• Openness/

Transparency• Risk of Counter-Suit

• Unfair Dismissal [?]• Defamation• Plagiarism

• Investigation Procedures• Sanctions• Enforcement

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Contexts for Sanctions and Enforcement

• Employment – contracts may envisage dismissal, demotion, delayed promotion, reprimand, notation

• Registration and Licensing – debarment may be feasible (but is in practice very rarely used), but reprimand and notation are much more likely

• Course Enrolment – postgrad courses only – cessation, denial of credit

• Professional Membership – rules may enable debarment or reduction of status (but rarely do)

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Conclusions

• Plagiarism is a badly misunderstood concept• The notion is culturally-dependent, both in the

ethno-lingual sense, and real-world/digital-world • Conventional, narrow, defensive, proprietary

attitudes to appropriation need to be moderated• Approved forms of appropriation need to be

documented, to overcome the ethical bind• Laws need to be clarified, Codes expressed, and

appropriate processes defined and documented

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Plagiarism by Academics

Roger ClarkeXamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Professor, A.N.U. , U.N.S.W., Uni. of Hong Kong

http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/...

Plag0602.html (PostPrint), Plag0506.html (PrePrint), and Plag-ANU-060422.ppt (Slide-Set)

Published in J. Assoc. Infor. Syst. 7, 2 (February 2006) http://jais.isworld.org/articles/default.asp?vol=7&art=5

ANU DCS26 April 2006