Someone plagiarized my work in their SoTL project

[foralurker]

Good gravy...

So I'm putting together my annual report and while checking out my (unimpressive) metrics I come across this person's Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project, documented in the form of an unpublished manuscript on their website. They have documented their own teaching project, and as a whole their work is "original," but the introduction is completely lifted from my journal article.

This person lists themselves as a lecturer at a university in England. (Is this considered a "lecturer" or an "assistant professor" position over there?)

It seems they finished their PhD around 2017, then enrolled in an education-adjacent graduate course around 2021 and wrote this manuscript as the final paper for that course. The manuscript/paper is a SoTL project documenting a teaching technique they utilized in a couple of their university-level courses during COVID remote teaching. They've included screenshots and enough evidence to suggest they were indeed doing the work of documenting their teaching, and this was supported by scholarship. They did provide a single reference to my journal article on a totally softball point. But the introduction is clearly mine, with a couple word swaps to include "COVID" and "remote teaching."

At first I thought this was a graduate teaching assistant, but when I clicked on the Home Page I realized this wasn't a student but a faculty member. They've published several research articles within their discipline and have hundreds of citations. This unpublished SoTL manuscript is mixed in with their research. It appears again on their teaching page. (The manuscript includes a note indicating it was a final paper for a class that was taken sometime AFTER they held a PhD.)

To put it bluntly, I'm completely and utterly pissed off. I'm small potatoes over here studying bullshit about college teaching because that's all I'm capable of doing with my life, and this person is a freaking Econ researcher who knows better. They know better than this. They know this is plagiarism. Their SoTL project, while presently an unpublished manuscript, is positioned among their publications on their professional website. Had this been published, I'd be contacting a journal editor. But when it's an unpublished, shared SoTL project, what do I do? Short of emailing this person and ripping them a new a—hole, does anyone have any advice?

Oh my god, I'm so pissed off. Thanks, everyone. :-(

[Puget]

What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?  Do you want them to take it down? Be fired?
The latter seems a bit drastic, since it isn't clear to me that this is actually causing you, or anyone else, any tangible harm. A comparison of dates would make it obvious that your paper came first, it isn't published, wasn't part of their degree, and no one is profiting from it. Yes, plagiarism is wrong, but in this case the only harm seems to be that it upsets you. Personally, I'd just laugh it off. But if you want to play hardball, you could email them with a document showing the overlap with your paper and ask them to remove it from their website with a threat to go to their chair if they don't by a certain date.

[Parasaurolophus]

I don't know that it's worth your while acting on it. I don't see it accomplishing anything.

But I'll say this: the people who do this typically don't do it just once. I'd bet a deep dive into their dissertation and publications would reveal a lot of other instances.

You could certainly make this into a crusade, and you'd probably end up with enough evidence to seriously damage them. But it would take a fair bit of work, and that hardly seems worth your while. Just keep an eye on them and, if or when it's published, contact the editor.

[Hegemony]

That would make flames come out my ears, no question. I personally would vote for notifying the lecturer's institution. If one of the faculty members in the department I run were plagiarizing, I unquestionably would want to be notified about it. For one thing, that's fraud and stealing. For another thing, this person is taking a position that many worthy non-plagiarists might have. For a third thing, it's better to stop it early on than after the plagiarist has stolen many more people's work — and perhaps will embarrass the institution a great deal when their decorated and lauded academic is exposed down the line. (Unless it's Harvard. Then I guess it will not be embarrassed.) For a fourth thing, is there a chance someone could make the connection and think you had plagiarized from them? Better stop that in its tracks!

It's like when you find a student has plagiarized their paper, and six or seven faculty members have just said, "Well, what would it accomplish to prosecute this? I'll just let it go and save the trouble."

Don't be another one of those faculty members. Sound the alarm.

[sandgrounder]

I work for a British university - the context to this is probably the teaching qualification that new staff have to complete, usually as part of their probation requirements (Covid may have delayed this as it did many things). It leads to a fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and the % of academic staff possessing the qualification is one (but a not very important one) of the metrics universities are judged on.

Rules about not plagiarising do apply to this qualification (usually a postgraduate certificate from the employing university) as much as they do to any other. You could therefore report this to the head of the economics department / school and they'd be obliged to do something, although my bet would be that the education faculty delivering the qualification will not want to investigate, as they tend to be very averse to (often deserved) criticism of the rigour of these courses. If the university is a R1 equivalent and the person is otherwise valued, it's unlikely to have major consequences though.

Personally, I'd at least contact the person, point out you've spotted the plagiarism and get them to remove it from the internet, so they do not benefit from it. I'd also set up a publication alert on their Orcid ID and take action if they do ever attempt to publish it.

[Hibush]

You could therefore report this to the head of the economics department / school and they'd be obliged to do something...

Personally, I'd at least contact the person, point out you've spotted the plagiarism and get them to remove it from the internet, so they do not benefit from it. I'd also set up a publication alert on their Orcid ID and take action if they do ever attempt to publish it.

This context is helpful. Providing the essential information, but letting the institution figure out what to do is wise. OP's reasonable request not to have their stuff on the internet with someone else's name on it should be easy to accommodate.

Tagging the ORCID for the future is a nice way to protect yourself for the future. Odds are that they won't publish anything at all if this a pure employment credential for a non-researcher.

[Ruralguy]

I see this sort of thing a lot (not necessarily with my research), and what is worse, is that it seems to be ignored by some journals when I have pointed it out (response was something along the lines that it isn't really the *same* thing because the way the format of the solution to the problem was written out or some BS like that).

[foralurker]

I work for a British university - the context to this is probably the teaching qualification that new staff have to complete, usually as part of their probation requirements (Covid may have delayed this as it did many things). It leads to a fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and the % of academic staff possessing the qualification is one (but a not very important one) of the metrics universities are judged on.

Thanks for this info. I wouldn't have figured that out.

But I'll say this: the people who do this typically don't do it just once. I'd bet a deep dive into their dissertation and publications would reveal a lot of other instances.

I haven't read any of their other work (not an economics person) but if I decide to spin up a TII report to highlight the match to my own manuscript, I may upload a couple of their other articles to TII too.

It's like when you find a student has plagiarized their paper, and six or seven faculty members have just said, "Well, what would it accomplish to prosecute this? I'll just let it go and save the trouble."

That's also my thought process.



I'm going to give myself a couple of days to think about this. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate it.

[Wahoo Redux]

If it were me I'd email them directly. Explain that you found this and that this is your work verbatim; you do not think that this is appropriate.   You ask them to paraphrase rather than copy the document and cite you appropriately.  Leave it at that.  No threats or anything.  If they are smart enough to get a PhD they will infer the subtext.  They get their credential; you get a citation.  Win-win.  At least I think that is what would happen.

Personally, I think you have the right to expect to accomplish recognition out of this.  It is not a small thing.

[Kron3007]

If it were me I'd email them directly. Explain that you found this and that this is your work verbatim; you do not think that this is appropriate.   You ask them to paraphrase rather than copy the document and cite you appropriately.  Leave it at that.  No threats or anything.  If they are smart enough to get a PhD they will infer the subtext.  They get their credential; you get a citation.  Win-win.  At least I think that is what would happen.

Personally, I think you have the right to expect to accomplish recognition out of this.  It is not a small thing.

Personally, I probably wouldn't do anything, but this seems like the right path if you want to.  Just contact them politely and point it out.  If they don't correct it, then you can decide if you want to escalate.  Like I said, I don't see much point, but it is perfectly valid to feel how you do.

One caveat though, is that you say they did cite you and did change some words etc.  Peoples' interpretation of what constituted plagiarism can vary and without seeing the text it is impossible to know where this case lies.  Depending on how similar or dissimilar it is, you may find there is no recourse at all.

[sinenomine]

A couple years after a book I wrote was published, someone in the UK (self) published a book on a subset of the same topic, using the exact same cover imagery that I had, and making no mention in his book of my earlier, foundational work on the topic. I did some digging myself and asked some friends in the UK (I'm in the US) about the author, and learned he had a track record for this kind of activity. I reached out to him to point out the similarities, and he quietly withdrew his.

I now use this example when I teach about plagiarism in my writing classes.