Plagiarism

[Ancient Fellow]

There's a thread in the Teaching sub-forum on student plagiarism, what about the grown-up version?

I have heard some amusing tales of plagiarism, including one where a visiting scholar is giving a paper in a departmental library and a member of the audience recognizes it as his own work. The audience member goes to the shelf in the department library, takes his own book down and begins to read in parallel with the speaker from his plagiarized chapter. Brilliant stuff.

In an article I wrote some time back, I mentioned having found a very famous 20th century author lifting most of a page verbatim from a less-known 19th century author, and I included the parallel texts in a footnote. I assumed that publishing this would cause a bit of a stir, some pushback, or at least some interest, but although it's an article that's been widely read, to my surprise nobody seemed to care about the plagiarism.  Ah well...

[AJ_Katz]

I know a postdoc who was asked to review a paper.  It was almost word-for-word from her previously published manuscript. 

I also reviewed a paper that was generally, poorly written, except occasional phrases that were exceptional.  A little Google searching matched those well-written phrases back to published manuscripts...  which were usually the exact manuscript cited by the authors!  I was able to identify more than 25% of the manuscript was copied word-for-word from other sources, usually those sources they cited.  The section editor contacted the publisher who then admitted that they don't perform the plagiarism check until after the reviews!  What a waste of time for all parties involved. 

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no scarlet letter for this kind of attempt at plagiarism.  We always chalk it up to the authors not knowing any better because that's how it's done in their culture.  It's a frustrating system.

[Tenured_Feminist]

I've known of two borderline cases in which the perps had no significant consequences other than earning my distrust. In both cases, it was a younger scholar engaged in more or less wholesale ripping off of the work of a slightly more advanced scholar who had not yet published.

[mamselle]

I know of two cases of profs stealing and publishing student work, one in the 1950s, one in the 1990s.

Also, a friend's complete book was more or summarized and reprinted, chapter for chapter, in a tenured faculty's book at a different school (in the same town) without any credit (even naming the original book in a bibliography, the notes, or the text. I read the whole thing through to see.)

In each case, the plagiaree was unable (impecunious) or unwilling (too much kerfluffle in a tight town) or paralyzed (life's work lost) to prosecute.

I'm still angry about all three situations on their behalf.

M.

[Hibush]

In each case, the plagiaree was unable (impecunious) or unwilling (too much kerfluffle in a tight town) or paralyzed (life's work lost) to prosecute.
M.

With online journals, some now provide a space for commenting on the article. That makes it possible to comment: "This work is substantially the same as my article published in 20xx. See doi:2222-x-2222"

I wonder what the editors would do on reading that comment.

[larryc]

Check out this bullshit: http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2019/12/heres-what-happens-when-you-report.html?m=1

[namazu]

Check out this bullshit: http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2019/12/heres-what-happens-when-you-report.html?m=1

I had a similar experience with a different Elsevier journal, in which *data* (think, the better part of a table, in detail) had been copied wholesale from a previously-published paper in a much more famous Elsevier journal (not mine).  I reported it in 2012 and am still waiting for the plagiarized/fraudulent paper to be retracted, even though the ombudsperson at Famous Journal agreed that it seemed like a clear-cut case of plagiarism.  Very dispiriting, and calls into question the legitimacy of COPE, which will not enforce its guidelines.

[Morris Zapp]

I found an article which plagiarized my own work in a scientific journal and reported it to the publisher. They didn't actually retract but instead added some kind of additional language which comes up when you pull the paper indicating that the material on pp. 36-7 is improperly cited.  I also contacted the individual's department chair and university administration and NEVER HEARD BACK FROM THEM.

[Myword]

How do people feel about plagiarizing yourself? Taking material from your own work in the humanities without citing it?

[pedanticromantic]

I was once asked to review a paper that significantly plagiarized parts of my PhD diss.  He said it was a simple oversight and retracted the submission, but subsequently published a book with a top press,  that took from a lot of my dissertation ideas without any credit.  I haven't done anything, though, because I moved on from that area, and can't be bothered. But the guy contacted me about a year or two ago and wanted me to provide a copy of something I'd cited in my dissertation! ...So he could cite directly from it without just stealing all the quotations I'd cited, I suppose. Needless to say I didn't provide it. You know who you are, you little sh!t!

[Caracal]

How do people feel about plagiarizing yourself? Taking material from your own work in the humanities without citing it?

I've always thought the term "self plagiarism" didn't make any sense. The sin at the heart of plagiarism is stealing other people's work and taking credit for it. The question of how much an author can reuse their own work is a real one, but it gets at fundamentally different issues.

To a large extent, the main consideration is just giving credit to places that were nice enough to publish your work in the past. If you have a book chapter that you spun off into a previous article, it is standard to just have a footnote stating that at the beginning of the chapter. It would be strange to avoid including that. Do that and get the obligatory permission and that is all that is required.

If you're talking about just lifting whole passages from a previous thing you wrote, doing that without attribution, isn't plagiarism, but it might involve copyright issues, and it seems like misrepresenting yourself to whoever is publishing your work. But for everything short of direct quotations, it would be strange to cite, unless it is just for informational purposes, "In my previous work on British Teapots, I went into this in more depth." But, the basic assumption is that you might be reusing, reconceptualizing or repackaging your own ideas for some different purpose.

[Ancient Fellow]

I initially approached this from the perspective that such stinkers who plagiarized others were outliers. Given how widespread the problem seems to be, do you all think that the prevalence of such examples, esp. the response of the Giant Publisher mentioned above, indicates a widespread shift in the acceptance of plagiarism?

A generation ago: It's unethical and may justifiably end your career.

Today: We're all frantically busy counting publications. Try not to get caught.

[RatGuy]

My former provost had to institute a policy mandating that theses be run through a plagiarism detection program. He had discovered (I do not remember how--perhaps a whistleblower?) that graduate students in the College of Business and the College of Education were reusing their friends' thesis from other universities. As in, students at my school were asking their friends at other schools to give them copies of their theses, which were submitted wholesale.

[Myword]

Nasty plagiarism reflects a decline in honesty in society, maybe the world. The more scholars and students, more plagiarism occurs, obviously.

It is partly laziness or inability to write and understand the material. Or just negligence.

[AJ_Katz]

Nasty plagiarism reflects a decline in honesty in society, maybe the world. The more scholars and students, more plagiarism occurs, obviously.

It is partly laziness or inability to write and understand the material. Or just negligence.

I am going to respectfully disagree.  I don't think it's a shift in our society or morals, I believe it is a combination of factors that has increased the number of cases in which we are identifying plagiarism.  For one, it is much easier to steal text, figures, and tables, because we no longer have to re-type all of the words to take them; a simple copy+paste works in seconds!  It is also easier to identify plagiarism now that we can search for articles and search text using software.  Today, there is more pressure than ever to publish (volume) and relatively less emphasis on quality (who actually reads my papers anyway?).  Finally, our world is more interconnected than ever before and so we likely have more interactions with non-native English speakers than before. Our non-native English speaking colleagues likely feel more pressure to publish in English and these people bring their own value systems with respect to plagiarism into this game too.  The other element in this equation is that publishers are financially-driven, so they've got no real skin in the game when it comes to quality either -- I would venture to guess that they probably lose more in their reputation by retracting articles (admitting they allowed a plagiarized work to get published) than they gain by simply ignoring the reports.

The only way I envision any type of change might happen in this equation is if academics stop publishing in journals and start publishing in other places like Digital Commons instead.  Or if there is some type of international standard for what is / is not plagiarism and how to earn reputation for not plagiarizing (like Publons), I just don't think things will change.

I remember several years ago there was a U.S. politician whose dissertation or thesis was found to be largely plagiarized.  I don't remember who it was and I don't think there was any retribution for it, although some people have had their degrees removed by a university for that type of action.