Attribution of words versus attribution of responsibilities : Academic plagiarism and university practice

This paper examines a case of academic plagiarism and the subsequent treatment of the issues across several academic institutions. It calls for academic leaders in universities to act on what constitutes a serious breach of standards, engendered in part by broader institutional norms and values promoting the need for publications in a ‘publish or perish’ environment. While universities often promote high-sounding ideals and would generally wish to be seen to uphold high academic standards, it is argued that silence and complicity surround the way in which instances of plagiarism in academic publications are often dealt with. Actions (and inaction) by academic leaders in universities in dealing with cases of academic plagiarism speak volumes in terms of the values academic institutions profess, and those they actually uphold. The paper prompts readers to consider the need for a more consistent and proactive stance on the part of their own institutions to exercise ethical leadership in identifying and addressing academic plagiarism when it occurs.

Plagiarism in Academic Texts

The ethical and social responsibility of citing the sources in a scientific or artistic work is undeniable. This paper explores, in a preliminary way, academic plagiarism in its various forms. It includes findings based on a forensic analysis. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness on the importance of considering these details when writing and publishing a text. Hopefully, this analysis may put the issue under discussion.

Academia Accommodating Plagiarism? Surely Not!

In April 2010, Senior lecturer A discovered a new article on strategic entrepreneurship that contained her own words and paragraphs, published under the name of two complete strangers. Over the next eight months, in search of a just outcome, A contacted various people and institutions involved: the journal editor and publisher, and more than 20 academics and academic managers at five universities located in four different countries, including vice chancellors, rectors, and university professors. While nobody disputed the plagiarism (which involved at least three documents and more than 50 pages of text, tables, and figures), most were reluctant to act. Disillusioned by institutional responses, A had to decide whether to continue pursuing a just outcome at the risk of damaging professional relationships (and her future career), or whether to accept the status quo. She wondered what it would take to change the system to genuinely reject plagiarism.

“I didn’t mean to steal someone else’s words!”:a forensic linguistic approach to detecting intentional plagiarism

The concept of plagiarism is not uncommonly associated with the concept of intellectual property, both for historical and legal reasons: the approach to the ownership of ‘moral’, nonmaterial goods has evolved to the right to individual property, and consequently a need was raised to establish a legal framework to cope with the infringement of those rights. The solution to plagiarism therefore falls most often under two categories: ethical and legal. On the ethical side, education and intercultural studies have addressed plagiarism critically, not only as a means to improve academic ethics policies (PlagiarismAdvice.org, 2008), but mainly to demonstrate that if anything the concept of plagiarism is far from being universal (Howard & Robillard, 2008). Even if differently, Howard (1995) and Scollon (1994, 1995) argued, and Angèlil-Carter (2000) and Pecorari (2008) later emphasised that the concept of plagiarism cannot be studied on the grounds that one definition is clearly understandable by everyone. Scollon (1994, 1995), for example, claimed that authorship attribution is particularly a problem in non-native writing in English, and so did Pecorari (2008) in her comprehensive analysis of academic plagiarism. If among higher education students plagiarism is often a problem of literacy, with prior, conflicting social discourses that may interfere with academic discourse, as Angèlil-Carter (2000) demonstrates, we then have to aver that a distinction should be made between intentional and inadvertent plagiarism: plagiarism should be prosecuted when intentional, but if it is part of the learning process and results from the plagiarist’s unfamiliarity with the text or topic it should be considered ‘positive plagiarism’ (Howard, 1995: 796) and hence not an offense. Determining the intention behind the instances of plagiarism therefore determines the nature of the disciplinary action adopted. Unfortunately, in order to demonstrate the intention to deceive and charge students with accusations of plagiarism, teachers necessarily have to position themselves as ‘plagiarism police’, although it has been argued otherwise (Robillard, 2008). Practice demonstrates that in their daily activities teachers will find themselves being required a command of investigative skills and tools that they most often lack. We thus claim that the ‘intention to deceive’ cannot inevitably be dissociated from plagiarism as a legal issue, even if Garner (2009) asserts that generally plagiarism is immoral but not illegal, and Goldstein (2003) makes the same severance. However, these claims, and the claim that only cases of copyright infringement tend to go to court, have recently been challenged, mainly by forensic linguists, who have been actively involved in cases of plagiarism. Turell (2008), for instance, demonstrated that plagiarism is often connoted with an illegal appropriation of ideas. Previously, she (Turell, 2004) had demonstrated by comparison of four translations of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to Spanish that the use of linguistic evidence is able to demonstrate instances of plagiarism. This challenge is also reinforced by practice in international organisations, such as the IEEE, to whom plagiarism potentially has ‘severe ethical and legal consequences’ (IEEE, 2006: 57). What plagiarism definitions used by publishers and organisations have in common – and which the academia usually lacks – is their focus on the legal nature. We speculate that this is due to the relation they intentionally establish with copyright laws, whereas in education the focus tends to shift from the legal to the ethical aspects. However, the number of plagiarism cases taken to court is very small, and jurisprudence is still being developed on the topic. In countries within the Civil Law tradition, Turell (2008) claims, (forensic) linguists are seldom called upon as expert witnesses in cases of plagiarism, either because plagiarists are rarely taken to court or because there is little tradition of accepting linguistic evidence. In spite of the investigative and evidential potential of forensic linguistics to demonstrate the plagiarist’s intention or otherwise, this potential is restricted by the ability to identify a text as being suspect of plagiarism. In an era with such a massive textual production, ‘policing’ plagiarism thus becomes an extraordinarily difficult task without the assistance of plagiarism detection systems. Although plagiarism detection has attracted the attention of computer engineers and software developers for years, a lot of research is still needed. Given the investigative nature of academic plagiarism, plagiarism detection has of necessity to consider not only concepts of education and computational linguistics, but also forensic linguistics. Especially, if intended to counter claims of being a ‘simplistic response’ (Robillard & Howard, 2008). In this paper, we use a corpus of essays written by university students who were accused of plagiarism, to demonstrate that a forensic linguistic analysis of improper paraphrasing in suspect texts has the potential to identify and provide evidence of intention. A linguistic analysis of the corpus texts shows that the plagiarist acts on the paradigmatic axis to replace relevant lexical items with a related word from the same semantic field, i.e. a synonym, a subordinate, a superordinate, etc. In other words, relevant lexical items were replaced with related, but not identical, ones. Additionally, the analysis demonstrates that the word order is often changed intentionally to disguise the borrowing. On the other hand, the linguistic analysis of linking and explanatory verbs (i.e. referencing verbs) and prepositions shows that these have the potential to discriminate instances of ‘patchwriting’ and instances of plagiarism. This research demonstrates that the referencing verbs are borrowed from the original in an attempt to construct the new text cohesively when the plagiarism is inadvertent, and that the plagiarist has made an effort to prevent the reader from identifying the text as plagiarism, when it is intentional. In some of these cases, the referencing elements prove being able to identify direct quotations and thus ‘betray’ and denounce plagiarism. Finally, we demonstrate that a forensic linguistic analysis of these verbs is critical to allow detection software to identify them as proper paraphrasing and not – mistakenly and simplistically – as plagiarism.

Plagiarism 2.0 : the new economy of academic dishonesty

As a writer, teacher and scholar of ‘the knowledge economy’ in the broadest sense, plagiarism fascinates me. I first encountered plagiarism in my Year 12 English class. We had been working for weeks writing poems and had submitted them to our teacher Mr How for assessment. Mr How was generally a pleasant individual who I remember as one of my favourite school teachers; however, he did not suffer fools easily. The time arrived for each of us to read our work to the class. Year 12 poetry being what it usually is, most of our efforts tended to blur into an angsty, slightly pretentious, self-important mess (similar to staff meetings in many university departments). However, one student’s poem stood out. It was emotive, insightful and economical in its use of language … and best of all, it did not suck! The poem’s author was one of the class’ biggest jocks, and not usually one to display such sensitivity, so we were all a little taken aback by what we were hearing. Stunned silence! At the poem’s conclusion, Mr How congratulated the student on such an excellent effort and produced a copy of the collected works of Emily Dickenson (if I remember correctly) from under his desk. He asked the student to turn to a page he had marked and recite the poem printed there. It was, of course, the same one the student had passed off as his. This time, there was no stunned silence: just the sound of remorseful sobs from our jock-poet-plagiarist who had been exposed in front of his classmates.

Perceptions of authorial identity in academic writing among undergraduate accounting students: implications for unintentional plagiarism

The current study explores first, second and third year UK accounting students’ perceptions of authorial identity and their implications for unintentional plagiarism. The findings suggest that whilst all students have reasonably positive perceptions of their authorial identity, there is room for improvement. Significant differences in second year students’ perceptions were reported for some positive aspects of authorial identity. However, results for negative aspects show that second year students find it significantly more difficult to express accounting in their own words than first and third years. Furthermore, second years are significantly more afraid than first years that what they write will look unimpressive. Finally, the results for approaches to writing, which also have implications for unintentional plagiarism, revealed that students across all years appear to adopt aspects of top-down, bottom-up and pragmatic approaches to writing. Emerging from these findings, the study offers suggestions to accounting educators regarding authorial identity instruction.

Admission as a lawyer : the fearful spectre of academic misconduct

Notwithstanding a cultural critique of the concepts that underpin the values of academic integrity, both the university, as a community of scholarship, and the legal profession, as a vocation self-defined by integrity, retain traditional values. Despite the lack of direct relevance of plagiarism to legal practice, courts now demonstrate little tolerance for applicants for admission against whom findings of academic misconduct have been made. Yet this lack of tolerance is neither fatal nor absolute, with the most egregious forms of academic misconduct, coupled with less than complete candour, resulting in no more than a deferral of an application for admission for six months. Where allegations are of a less serious nature, law schools deal with allegations in a less formal or punitive fashion, regarding it as an educative function of the university, assisting students to understand the cultural practices of scholarship. For law students seeking admission to practice, applicants are under an obligation of complete candour in disclosing any matters that bear on their suitability, including any finding of academic misconduct. Individual legal academics, naturally adhering to standards of academic integrity, often have only a general understanding of the admissions process. Applying appropriate standards of academic integrity, legal academics can create difficulties for students seeking admission by not recognising a pastoral obligation to ensure that students have a clear understanding of the impact adverse findings will have on admission. Failure to fulfil this obligation deprives students of the opportunity to take prompt remedial action as well as presenting practical problems for the practitioner who moves their admission.

Academic Integrity Guidelines: School of Geography's Policy

The School of Geography's policy and requirements in dealing with matters related to academic integrity and plagiarism.

Academic Integrity Guidelines - Quiz and References

A multiple-choice quiz to test a student's understanding of academic integrity and plagiarism. A range of quiz formats including Blackboard, IMS-QTI, plain text and Respondus is available for users to download.

Academic Integrity Guidelines - Professional Values

Explanatory notes on why academic integrity is important for students in their professional and personal development.

Academic integrity at the University of Southampton

This is a two part audio podcast designed to provide advice and guidance for students at the University of Southampton. Transcripts for each part of the podcast are also provided.

Academic integrity resources at the University of Southampton

These are resources within EdShare which provide support and guidance to students on working with academic integrity and avoiding plagiarism.

Researching an Academic Paper

This presentation is for students on the 3rd year ECS Multimedia course where students run their own conference, and submit and review papers. In this presentation we look at how to do the research behind an academic paper, finding sources of information and planning your reading. We also look at plagiarism, and see a number of different ways in which you can reference and include the work of others.

Academic Integrity Yes or No - Questions Only

A set of questions to be used in class to introduce the concept of academic integrity.