What do you do about plagiarism

The radio psychiatrist Raj Persaud admitted “inadvertent plagiarism” of colleagues’ books and articles and last week was suspended for three months by the General Medical Council for the offence.

Allegations of fictional plagiarism – whether it’s Ian McEwan or Dan Brown (fictional enough, after all) – are often the stuff of news stories. In fact, one of the commonest ways to attack the commercially successful has always been to claim that the big name author has nicked his plot from some neglected and impoverished scribbler. The originality of Mrs McCain's cookie recipes has obviously been causing some trouble too.

It is less often that academic plagiarism makes much of an impact outside the academy. Allusive allegations remain buried in prefaces and are the stuff of late night conversations at conference bars. It tends to be a no win game on both sides: the supposed culprit looks cheap and dishonest, the complainant tends to look petulant and armed with an axe to grind. Mud sticks everywhere.

It hasn’t often happened to me. But when, years ago, I saw a report of a lecture given in the USA, using material that I was pretty sure derived directly from work I had done and talked about in a lecture of my own, but not yet published – the feeling was rather like having your handbag gone through by an opportunistic thief. The temptation to pursue it was enormous.  By and large though, in most cases, it is probably best to shrug shoulders and forget about it. (It’s rather like a bad and unfair review – however much you want to write and object, the wise course is put up and shut up.)

Students though don’t have that privilege. The more they are examined on course works and dissertations, the more plagiarism (and its dastardly variant ‘self-plagiarism’) replaces simple cheating as the crime they most fear being accused of. Some I know are dogged by terror of the “inadvertent plagiarism” that Persaud owned up to.

I have no idea what Persaud thought he was doing. But the truth is that most student cases of traditional plagiarism (I mean good old-fashioned copying, rather than buying essays off the internet) are usually inadvertent – and glaringly obvious.

Shaming as it is, plagiarism in the old style is usually a consequence of mindless diligence. It happens like this: stage one, the innocent culprit takes copious notes (actually huge quotes) from a book or article; stage two, a few days later, said culprit copies out great chunks of their own notes (which are, after all, in their own handwriting) into their essay – probably unaware that they might just as well have down-loaded the book without the intermediary process of note taking.

It is also almost impossible not to spot. As you read the essay through, you instantly sense when you move from undergraduate prose to that of (say) Sir Ronald Syme. And it doesn’t usually take more than 30 minutes, and a bit of common sense, to pin down the exact source.

What do I do then? Well, in a regular weekly essay, I don’t usually take them to the cleaners. If you start an hour’s supervision with an accusation of plagiarism, you’ll most likely spent 45 minutes mopping up the tears (such are the high stakes of this particular crime).

Instead I insert quotation marks around the offending paras and I write in the margin the exact source including page numbers – and write something slightly tart at the end.

It almost always does the trick. Perhaps someone should have tried it with Raj Persaud.

Comments

[Matt Karnes]

I only found your blog today and am very much enjoying it.

Whenever I (a late in life undergraduate) write an essay it is invariably filled with properly cited quotes. Some professors have said I quote too much, though I've never submitted an essay that was more than 20% quotes.
I think I have three good reasons for quoting so much. First, if my argument in an essay is a synthesis of the arguments of many smarter people than myself, I should quote those people. Second, I would hate to para-phrase too closely and slip into plagiarism. Third, I do not write beautiful papers, but most of the people I quote compose sentences that are very handsome and lift the intellect in a way my clunky lines don't.

[SW Foska]

Lina, thanks for your comments. I'm trying to deal with this problem in my university. My line has always been that tutors should set different questions in the exam from in coursework (and external examiners are supposed to patrol this). So students can happily repeat facts or even ideas, but the argument must address the specific question asked at each stage.
Do you get set the same questions in different exercises?

[Lina]

As a student, I'd like to belatedly pick up on the issue of "self-plagiarism", which causes us every bit as much terror as plagiarism. We must not reuse material we've written in an essay in an exam....even if a lecturer sets a compulsory exam question very similar to an essay title she previously set, essentially forcing us to reuse material.
Plagiarism of other people's work can be guarded against by spattering the page with quotation marks or summaries of (attributed, naturally) arguments. Self-plagiarism.... a fellow-student recently ended up having to reference himself for an idea, and we live in fear of future lecturers causing us to self-plagiarise.

[Nicholas]

Mary, Thank you. In return, I recall Compton Mackenzie’s reply to an importunate wanabee, Your MS is with me, I assure you I shall waste no time reading it.

But on plagiarism, how many original ideas does one have? Almost everything I know or say comes from someone else, and where if doesn’t it is a serendipitous amalgam. I was reading the apocryphal book of Judith last night and, coming to IX (5/6), I thought, That is Jansenism, no wonder it is not in the Vulgate. Small perception; passing through a small mind in the early hours, no more. I once proposed to Richard Gregory that if one had all knowledge, it would be the same as having none. He dismissed the notion, but than an Emeritus can become stuck in his ways.

[SW Foska]

mary, you're making it up - nobody is called Deirdre any more (not after Coronation Street anyway). That's not plagiarism, that's fiction.

[Steve the neighbour]

Frick. It is sometimes impossible not to plagerise, as you have alluded to. Point is, it gets more likely as time trucks on. More and more people take their lead from more and more published "names", tweaking a law here and a theory there, and soon the whole universe of potential answers to every known problem shrinks. Sometimes, even in this coven of whores called "management", the urge to get a name on the front page surpasses that of creativity - even manifestly incorrect creativity, which is at least excusable on the grounds of brilliance. Forgive the intrusion of the discpline that "dare not speak its name" but it may be the forbearer of worse cases of plagarism than most - and by and large, they make an awful lot of money.

[Mary]

Nicholas... how about..

Deirdre, this essay is not bad in places, but I think Sir Ronald's wording may have confused you

[Nicholas]

Mary, do please share some of your slightly tart comments. They sound well worth the odd bit of plagiarising.

[Lord Truth]

Ah....Pity Lord Truth,who in the course of a year or so has probably provided ideas for at least a dozen PhDs,possibly even one or two books...and who will never be referenced....
Those who reach the top of the greasy academic pole,far from being the mild epitomies of civilised life are in fact the most ruthless and theiving,owing their positions to every kind of chicanery from breaking into the Deans office,seducing the Head of Studies secretary for news of possible staff changes,anything goes in the world of Academia.
It is this that puzzles people invited to the honour of dining at High Table
Expecting a veritable orgy of brilliant conversation,there is ,after a few words about what Lord Truth had to say about Beards latest blog ,there follows nothing but the most puerile of remarks-- 'Beckams new hairstyle is fabulous dont you think? -The Russians winning Eurovision ,fancy that....
Any attempt at serious conversation is blighted by fear...
I say Beard,got anything new in the pipe line? Well Im thinking of -er- nothing actually Dennis...Hows that idea you had for a book on Crete going Dennis? Well,I've started--er dropped the idea completely ....
Walking though a minefield is childs play to these people.

[Xjy]

Tony's response is neither plagiarism nor a creative collage, but an in-joke showing just how addictive the blog is (well done, Mary!) for some of us. (I wonder if Mary has some trick for selecting her blogees or if we just self-select in spite of her :-).

The thing is (re Tony) that the level of our blog-clogging is pretty, hm, level, so there are no glaring discrepancies between most individual contributions.

This is also a reflection on the general relevance of a lot of clogging blogees', hm, reflections.

[SW Foska]

Tony, that's not plagiarism, that's creative collage.

[Tony Francis]

I have been thinking a great deal about plagiarism. It is a very bad problem. I have come to these conclusions, based on my study of the problem. I think it can be solved by considering these points:
1.) Even if a great variety of subjects were covered by the selection of exam questions, the exam papers would still reflect one kind of approach rather than another. And if the setting of national papers were not to be a kind of national curriculum, then the papers would have to be either huge in length or extremely numerous, in which case the complexity of the system would become undesirably great.
2.) The label attached to the use of existing material often seems to depend on the intention of the reproducing author. If that intention is regarded as the attempt to steal, it is called plagiarism. If however it is regarded as a tribute, it may be called something like intertextuality. The charges of the former seem to predominate and occasionally produce outrageous pieces of nonsense, such as the use of an insignificant consecutive group of musical notes in a pop tune (My Sweet Lord) being treated as plagiarism. Clearly money rather than the wounded sensibility of the hideous Spector was the determining factor in this case.
3.) I was plagiarised three times in print, I am proud of it and regard it as a distinction. I think the Research Assessment Exercise could look at that when evaluating the quality of my work.
But as a book buyer, I kind of want my money back, as for faulty goods. I looked recently at a selection of a well-known American poet which boasted a 'new introduction'; but the new introduction was mainly apercus borrowed without acknowledgement from older introductions and criticism by other scholars. So to me the buyer, it wasn't new. Trading standards?

[SW Foska]

Clayton's perspective is interesting. It's one thing as a teacher, another as an author, another as a consumer.
I was plagiarised three times in print, I am proud of it and regard it as a distinction. I think the Research Assessment Exercise could look at that when evaluating the quality of my work.
But as a book buyer, I kind of want my money back, as for faulty goods. I looked recently at a selection of a well-known American poet which boasted a 'new introduction'; but the new introduction was mainly apercus borrowed without acknowledgement from older introductions and criticism by other scholars. So to me the buyer, it wasn't new. Trading standards?

[Lucy]

Mary may find it easy to spot the stylistic shift between the undergrad whose essay she's marking and the critic they (inadvertently?) copied, but lots of academics can't. I've had work returned which, despite being properly puncuated with quotation marks, has been corrected throughout so that Don X observes in the margin that learned Prof Y in the quotation is making a rather naive assumption. Invariably Dons are amused by their mistake and admit hurried or late-night marking - but if they can be that 'inadvertent', why can't we?

Michael Bulley - setting exam-only degrees doesn't help, I think. It's even easier, in the stress of an exam, to grab at a great idea or a great opening sentence that seems to have sprung into your mind, only to realise later that it is is really the work of someone else - and close paraphrase must, of course, be admitted.

[Clayton Burns]

There is behavior worse than plagiarism, which is a more-or-less open gamble that should be detected if the marker is awake.

What is far worse is the work of scholars such as Shoshana Felman, Emory, Comparative Literature. Her analysis of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw in her Writing and Madness is a disgrace. The Stanford 2003 text also implicates the university press because it fails to respond to comment on this botched analysis.

The Norton Critical Edition of The Turn of the Screw picked up the Felman essay as its major interpretation of the novella. The editors of the Norton do not respond to e-mail about the radical blunders of the Felman reading, including gross editorial errors perpetuated in the Norton.

The history of the Felman misreading, from the Yale French Studies appearance of the essay in 1977 forward to 2003, should be examined minutely in university classes on editing.

I find Felman's behavior more damaging to academic integrity than the acts of the foolish undergraduate cheaters.

Her bad faith in not even responding to comment directed to her creates some doubt about the fundamental honesty of academic life.

[anthony alcock]

The label attached to the use of existing material often seems to depend on the intention of the reproducing author. If that intention is regarded as the attempt to steal, it is called plagiarism. If however it is regarded as a tribute, it may be called something like intertextuality. The charges of the former seem to predominate and occasionally produce outrageous pieces of nonsense, such as the use of an insignificant consecutive group of musical notes in a pop tune (My Sweet Lord) being treated as plagiarism. Clearly money rather than the wounded sensibility of the hideous Spector was the determining factor in this case.

[Xjy]

Spotting plagiarism - and even more, pinning down the source - requires a really thorough knowledge of the subject and the preconditions for acquiring this knowledge, both personal and professional. As it is often the case that teachers themselves lack this level of mastery of the discipline (in several senses), there is a good chance some (or even many) teachers will miss (or not care about) the plagiarism. They may even be happy the student has been able to dig up something relevant.

Reading original texts (both creative and scholarly) and writing independent essays on them is becoming a lost art, probably, thanks to predigested compilations and multiple choice attitudes. You're probably right about your lot giving too low marks - even the attempt to read and write at a face-to-face level with the set books and their commentators deserves a premium these days.

[Peter Taylor]

Anonymous Academic's comments about students downloading their programming projects from the web is something I see from the other side. From my final year as a CST undergrad and for a few years afterwards I hung around a web forum for a programming language which is used by a lot of universities to teach undergrads. A stunning number of posts were from people wanting someone else to do their homework. Many of them simply copied the problem description verbatim. A few even copied the text warning them against plagiarism!

[Robert]

Each Oxford finalist this year, on the eve of their exams, was sent an individually-addressed email from the Proctors with the subject 'Plagiarism', describing the severe consequences of plagiarism in submitted work. This generated outright panic among the students, many of whom had submitted theses and treated the email as a personal accusation of cheating. None of us were very happy about this, and soon received a grovelling Proctorial apology.

For the sake of studentkind, please make sure this never happens in Cambridge!

[Eric]

I'm very tempted, like "Anonymous" above, to agree that there is a good deal of willful ignorance going on here. As someone who has taught Classics and writing at an undergraduate university for 20 years, I can attest that plagiarism is rarely--very rarely—“inadvertent” or the result of "mindless diligence." And, pace Kath, essays on Classics and related topics abound on the web (mythologypapers.com being just one example source).

Plagiarism has to be a "big deal" for undergraduates if it is to be so for graduate students and professionals. In this cut-and-paste world (what student copies notes by hand any more?) it is more important than ever to teach students how to legitimately incorporate others' ideas and words into their own work and to confront them when they don't do it. Yes, it's dreadfully uncomfortable, but talking through the examples is often more informative for both student and instructor. A silent mark avoids the awkwardness of tears, but assumes that the student actually knows exactly what s/he did wrong, and can also be misunderstood as a wink and nod to do better (i.e. find a less obvious source or change a few more words) the next time.

[jongleur]

Plagiarism shouldn't be a big deal for undergraduates. As you say, it is easily spotted and dealt with. Even the most startling able among the student body is not likely to produce, in the space of a week, a piece of work that merits publication in the open literature.(I speak only of my own experience in scientific studies.) In applying the supposedly rigorous standards of "peer-reviewed science" to what is no more than a five finger exercise one might be breaking a butterfly on a wheel. (I admit that the academic world could have changed out of all recogniton since I was a student myself.)

An un-related point: the pressures on academics to play fast and loose with the ethics of their profession are much greater than they were. This end justification of means must permeate the staff-student interface and make it harder for all involved to take "intellectual honesty" and "academic rigour" at all seriously

[kath]

You are talking about minor instances of inadvertent plagiarism. I've come across the whole range, including complete essays and dissertations copied from a single source. At the extreme end are the increasing number of students who purchase tailor-made essays or dissertations from websites. This is hard to prove although some sites selling tailor-made essays put the essays up for sale a few months later. Turnitin doesn't pick these up, of course, and, although the change of style can be remarkable, it's hard to present this as evidence.

It may be that websites don't offer Classics essays - and there would be no point in plagiarising for the weekly tutorial essay, since this doesn't count towards a degree. But the U.K.-based companies, which pay people to leaflet universities, are quite evidently making a decent profit so somebody is buying. And the people who pay to download essays which they then submit as their own are not doing so inadvertently - they are buying degrees.

I'm not posting a link to the essay websites because I don't want to give them any more publicity.

[Michael Bulley]

For published works, inadvertent plagiarism is a hard concept to swallow. It implies that you read something sometime and later became innocently convinced it was your own idea. I'm hard put to it to believe that can happen often.
For undergraduate students' work, the simple answer seems to be not to make the awarding of first degrees dependent on coursework or dissertations. I know there are those who say some bright students panic in exams and so an exam-only system would be unfair on them, but if coursework and dissertations attract problems such as plagiarism, it might be better to make them degree-free before the Masters and PhD level. Coursework and essays would then give undergraduates greater freedom to make mistakes, an essential part of learning. I first became aware of the "new" attitude when, after I had set an essay title, a student said to me "We can't do this, because you haven't told us what you want us to write." He was surprised when I replied "I don't know what I want you to write."

[Richard]

I like the typo "conservations" for "conversations". Of course, late night talk in conference bars can get a bit slurred...
All best,
Richard

[Anonymous Academic]

I'm so tempted to say that you have no idea what's really going on in UK universities. I'm a lecturer in computing in a UK university, and my experience of plagiarism ranges from students copying and pasting whole chunks of text and diagrams from web pages into their reports, through to paying other people to do it on sites such as rentacoder.com. This is not just inadvertant re-copying of notes made from sources, these are systematic and deliberate attempt to get degrees (or other rewards) without doing the work. I've had students submitting final-year projects having copied ALL their computer code off the web, we've had students pay other people to do all their 2nd year and 3rd year assignments through the web. Even one of our heads of department was discovered having plagiarised their entire research record.

It's endemic and its dangerous - so face it! I now assess students only through exams and in-class closed-book tests because I now trust no-one to do their own work independently.