How does one check for the plagiarizing of an entire bibliography section?

[Caracal]

But I still think that, unless this is a class on compiling bibliographies (a useful skill), then this is not really plagiarism but rather not understanding what the point of the exercise is. Which might point to the need for clearer instructions.

Given earlier discussions where people used the term "self-plagiarism" for students submitting some work that they had done themselves for one course to satisfy requirements of another course,  I think many faculty use the term "plagiarism" to signify any time a student might seem to have put in less than the expected amount of work for some course requirement.

Yeah, it gets overused. I don't know if copying an entire bibliography from another source can actually be plagiarism, but it would certainly be academic dishonesty. However, if slapping together a bunch of books you may not have actually read and calling it a bibliography is plagiarism, a lot of academics are going to be in trouble...

[marshwiggle]

But I still think that, unless this is a class on compiling bibliographies (a useful skill), then this is not really plagiarism but rather not understanding what the point of the exercise is. Which might point to the need for clearer instructions.

Given earlier discussions where people used the term "self-plagiarism" for students submitting some work that they had done themselves for one course to satisfy requirements of another course,  I think many faculty use the term "plagiarism" to signify any time a student might seem to have put in less than the expected amount of work for some course requirement.

Yeah, it gets overused. I don't know if copying an entire bibliography from another source can actually be plagiarism, but it would certainly be academic dishonesty. However, if slapping together a bunch of books you may not have actually read and calling it a bibliography is plagiarism, a lot of academics are going to be in trouble...

Seems like an emperor's new clothes problem.

[mamselle]

It's like padding a CV.

It's dishonest.

M.

[marshwiggle]

It's like padding a CV.

It's dishonest.

So what about Caracal's point?

I don't think that's really fair for a bibliography. All it is supposed to be is a list of works that influenced the author's thinking on the topic in some way. Including something on a bibliography doesn't mean you're certifying something about your knowledge of the work. My dissertation bibliography didn't include anything I literally had never read but it certainly included things that I read the half of four years ago and barely remembered anything about...

How much of a work must someone have read, and how much must they remember, to legitimately put it in a bibliography?

[jerseyjay]

It's like padding a CV.

It's dishonest.

M.

I am not sure it is dishonest. Again, it comes down to: what is the purpose of the bibliography appended to a proposal? Is it to identify works that the student has already consulted. Then it would be dishonest to list materials that have not been consulted. (Consulted being a somewhat dodgy word, meaning more than looking up in the catalog and less than actually reading the whole thing.)

Is it a list of works that the student is planning to consult? Then listing 20 pages of sources displays a poor grasp on the research process and should be treated as poor research skills but not academic dishonesty.

Is it a list of sources that the student think might be consulted? In this case, it would be fine to list many sources.

My guess is that it is the second option. But this, again, demonstrates poor research skills (which would warrant a lower grade or being told to redo the proposal) but not academic dishonesty (which could result in failing the whole class).

[mamselle]

It's like padding a CV.

It's dishonest.

So what about Caracal's point?

I don't think that's really fair for a bibliography. All it is supposed to be is a list of works that influenced the author's thinking on the topic in some way. Including something on a bibliography doesn't mean you're certifying something about your knowledge of the work. My dissertation bibliography didn't include anything I literally had never read but it certainly included things that I read the half of four years ago and barely remembered anything about...

How much of a work must someone have read, and how much must they remember, to legitimately put it in a bibliography?

My dissertation bibliography, in addition to all the works cited in my thesis, included the 250 titles I was required to annotate as one of my comps-equivalent exams (for an interdisciplinary study program). Of those, 125 were from my MA thesis (topics directly related; diss more focused on one particular era and item) and I added 125 as I prepared the diss.

I had to have read them all to be able to annotate them, obviously, and I was examined orally on them (the examiner also corrected/required me to fix some punctuation and infelicitous phrases). 

I'm currently working on an update for my website, probably adding another 100 titles or so.

More later, gotta go teach.

M.

[Caracal]

It's like padding a CV.

It's dishonest.

So what about Caracal's point?

I don't think that's really fair for a bibliography. All it is supposed to be is a list of works that influenced the author's thinking on the topic in some way. Including something on a bibliography doesn't mean you're certifying something about your knowledge of the work. My dissertation bibliography didn't include anything I literally had never read but it certainly included things that I read the half of four years ago and barely remembered anything about...

How much of a work must someone have read, and how much must they remember, to legitimately put it in a bibliography?

My dissertation bibliography, in addition to all the works cited in my thesis, included the 250 titles I was required to annotate as one of my comps-equivalent exams (for an interdisciplinary study program). Of those, 125 were from my MA thesis (topics directly related; diss more focused on one particular era and item) and I added 125 as I prepared the diss.

I had to have read them all to be able to annotate them, obviously, and I was examined orally on them (the examiner also corrected/required me to fix some punctuation and infelicitous phrases). 

I'm currently working on an update for my website, probably adding another 100 titles or so.

More later, gotta go teach.

M.

I obviously had a big book list for comps, but in my program there was no formalized way that translated into the dissertation bibliography. History is really a footnote/endnote field, so that's what dissertation readers pay attention to.

[Mobius]

Yes, they can be plagiarized. You'll know soon enough when they have to incorporate these sources in their paper.

[Caracal]

Yes, they can be plagiarized. You'll know soon enough when they have to incorporate these sources in their paper.

That wouldn't tell you anything. A preliminary bibliography is just a list of sources you might use. There's no requirement to actually incorporate them all in the paper.

[marshwiggle]

Yes, they can be plagiarized. You'll know soon enough when they have to incorporate these sources in their paper.

That wouldn't tell you anything. A preliminary bibliography is just a list of sources you might use. There's no requirement to actually incorporate them all in the paper.

Even if you did, unless you used direct quotations from a particular source, resulting in footnotes, would there be any "paper trail" to show that? For example, if a bibliography refers to an early paper which is commonly referenced in later papers, there might not be a single direct quote from the early paper even if there are specific quotes from the later ones. Does the early paper not belong in the bibliography in that case? If it is important, but hard to read, a writer may choose to use descriptions, definitions, etc. from later papers that are easier to read even though they originate in the early paper.

[jerseyjay]

It is still my opinion that unless one takes somebody else's intellectual labor without crediting it, there is no plagiarism. If I am not mistaken, in some fields, creating a bibliography is worthwhile goal in itself. In this case, merely copying somebody else's bibliography would be plagiarism. This, however, is not what most undergraduates are required to do. Thus, making an overly long list of sources may, or may not, be fulfilling the requirements of the assignments, but it would not be plagiarism, except to the extent that "plagiarism" now means merely bad research technique.

I regularly teach the senior thesis course for history majors. Part of this requires assembling a preliminary bibliography before writing a draft. If a student turned in an overly-long preliminary list of sources, I would probably mark him or her lower and have a discussion about the purpose of such an exercise. But I would not consider it a violation of academic integrity.

If the student, on the other hand, paid somebody else to write his paper, copied it from the internet, or merely paraphrased material from other sources with insufficient citations, then I would consider it plagiarism and might very well fail him.

[Hibush]

It is still my opinion that unless one takes somebody else's intellectual labor without crediting it, there is no plagiarism. If I am not mistaken, in some fields, creating a bibliography is worthwhile goal in itself. In this case, merely copying somebody else's bibliography would be plagiarism. This, however, is not what most undergraduates are required to do. Thus, making an overly long list of sources may, or may not, be fulfilling the requirements of the assignments, but it would not be plagiarism, except to the extent that "plagiarism" now means merely bad research technique.

I regularly teach the senior thesis course for history majors. Part of this requires assembling a preliminary bibliography before writing a draft. If a student turned in an overly-long preliminary list of sources, I would probably mark him or her lower and have a discussion about the purpose of such an exercise. But I would not consider it a violation of academic integrity.

If the student, on the other hand, paid somebody else to write his paper, copied it from the internet, or merely paraphrased material from other sources with insufficient citations, then I would consider it plagiarism and might very well fail him.

These are all important points.

There are many kinds of poor academic performance, also many kinds of academic misconduct. Plagiarism is principally one flavor of the latter, but also resulting in the former. Keeping those concepts distinct is helpful in addressing them effectively.

It is a good reminder that "bibliography" may be ambiguous to the students, so it is useful to acknowledge that people have different understandings of the term and then be explicit about what it means in the context of the present assignment.

[Caracal]

It is still my opinion that unless one takes somebody else's intellectual labor without crediting it, there is no plagiarism. If I am not mistaken, in some fields, creating a bibliography is worthwhile goal in itself. In this case, merely copying somebody else's bibliography would be plagiarism. This, however, is not what most undergraduates are required to do. Thus, making an overly long list of sources may, or may not, be fulfilling the requirements of the assignments, but it would not be plagiarism, except to the extent that "plagiarism" now means merely bad research technique.

I regularly teach the senior thesis course for history majors. Part of this requires assembling a preliminary bibliography before writing a draft. If a student turned in an overly-long preliminary list of sources, I would probably mark him or her lower and have a discussion about the purpose of such an exercise. But I would not consider it a violation of academic integrity.

If the student, on the other hand, paid somebody else to write his paper, copied it from the internet, or merely paraphrased material from other sources with insufficient citations, then I would consider it plagiarism and might very well fail him.

Yes, just copying and pasting something doesn't create plagiarism. A student could start their paper "As, Author says, '[7 page quote]' and then write. "I agree with the author's points," and it wouldn't be plagiarism. It wouldn't be writing the paper either, but it isn't something that should involve accusations of misconduct.

[marshwiggle]

Yes, just copying and pasting something doesn't create plagiarism. A student could start their paper "As, Author says, '[7 page quote]' and then write. "I agree with the author's points," and it wouldn't be plagiarism. It wouldn't be writing the paper either, but it isn't something that should involve accusations of misconduct.

I think faculty often want to punish students for finding loopholes in a poorly-defined assignment or rubric. That's a perfect example. (As is the whole question of what a "bibliography" is actually supposed to represent.) In the example above, if a 7 page quotation from another author would actually answer the prompts for the assignment, that's a pretty lousy assignment. And if the rubric doesn't in any way address the need for the student's individual, unique contributions, then the rubric is pretty useless also.

When I realize a student has found a loophole in my requirements, I don't take it out on that student. I think it through, and adjust the requirements in the future to close the loophole. What's more common is that many students fail to produce what I was expecting, which indicates that I didn't communicate it well enough. So again, I'll change it for the future, or provide an example to give them the idea.

[Caracal]

When I realize a student has found a loophole in my requirements, I don't take it out on that student. I think it through, and adjust the requirements in the future to close the loophole. What's more common is that many students fail to produce what I was expecting, which indicates that I didn't communicate it well enough. So again, I'll change it for the future, or provide an example to give them the idea.

Or in this case, where the thing is a preliminary assignment, you probably just want to explain to the student what the point of the assignment was and get them to redo it. In the future, you can be more explicit about what you're looking for, or consider an annotated preliminary bibliography, as a number of people have suggested.

I never quite understand when instructors seem to want to round something up to plagiarism or cheating. If it is a marginal case, I'm always going to give the student the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, you have to deal with clear cases of plagiarism when you find them, but if something is on the edge, I'm going to give the student a lower grade for failing to cite clearly and point out that while I'm viewing it is an innocent mistake, if they aren't more careful in the future, this could get them in big trouble.