Twitter discussion: on plagiarism

[ergative]

I don't know why people get all fired up about how "self-plagiarism" is not a thing. A person publishes a book. Then they write another book, and drop eight pages of chapter 2 of their first book verbatim into chapter 4 of their second book, without acknowledging it in any way. Now you could call that "re-using previously published material without acknowledgement and passing it off as new," or you could call it self-plagiarism. It's not quite the same as other plagiarism. That's why it's called self-plagiarism.

Whose ideas are they stealing without attribution? Their former self?

Well, they might be violating their first book's publisher's copyright.

[marshwiggle]

I don't know why people get all fired up about how "self-plagiarism" is not a thing. A person publishes a book. Then they write another book, and drop eight pages of chapter 2 of their first book verbatim into chapter 4 of their second book, without acknowledging it in any way. Now you could call that "re-using previously published material without acknowledgement and passing it off as new," or you could call it self-plagiarism. It's not quite the same as other plagiarism. That's why it's called self-plagiarism.

Whose ideas are they stealing without attribution? Their former self?

Well, they might be violating their first book's publisher's copyright.

That's exactly it. I'd be surprised if publishing contracts didn't have some boilerplate about the material not having been previously published elsewhere, since otherwise the publisher might get sued.

Copyright infringement and plagiarism, while both problematic, are totally different things and are different because of who is being harmed. Note that it's also ludicrous to talk about "self-copyright violation".

[downer]

I'd distinguish between self-plagiarism by academic researchers and students.

Quite a few researchers seem to basically have just one idea and they manage to present it in slightly different ways for years in a variety of journal papers. That's not great but it isn't cheating. It's only actual copying and pasting from previous work that counts as a problem.

When a student recycles work from one class to another, it means they are not putting the work for a course. The fact that they can do this may indicate a problem with the program, but it is hard to avoid courses that have some overlap in content. Generally, the problem is not that they are not presenting original ideas, because they don't have any original ideas.

[marshwiggle]

When a student recycles work from one class to another, it means they are not putting the work for a course.

Isn't the point of a grade in a course about the student's grasp of the material? At the very least, the amount of work a given student will have to "put in" will vary according to their previous background, academic ability and so on. Because of this two students who wind up with the same grade will not necessarily have put in similar amounts of work. So the grade is not a reliable measure of the amount of work anyway.

(I think this a one of those big differences between STEM and professional programs versus humanities, like grades for attendance and participation. If the student "gets it", that's what matters in the former.)

[ergative]

When a student recycles work from one class to another, it means they are not putting the work for a course.

Isn't the point of a grade in a course about the student's grasp of the material? At the very least, the amount of work a given student will have to "put in" will vary according to their previous background, academic ability and so on. Because of this two students who wind up with the same grade will not necessarily have put in similar amounts of work. So the grade is not a reliable measure of the amount of work anyway.

(I think this a one of those big differences between STEM and professional programs versus humanities, like grades for attendance and participation. If the student "gets it", that's what matters in the former.)

Even in STEM, I would argue that reusing assignments is still problematic. Suppose I assign a project in which my students must design an experiment that satisfies certain parameters (e.g., x independent variables, y type of analysis, z type of design). If they resubmit a project they did for a different class that is just a bit off, I can't know whether they actually understand x, y, and z. Maybe they do understand it, and thought 'eh, close enough'. Maybe they don't understand it at all, and just reused a project that happened to mostly meet the criteria.

If they resubmit a project from a different course that will answer the research question in a very different but still valid and elegant way, I have no idea whether they came up with that design on their own or whether they just got lucky because the scaffolding provided from the other course happened to work for my assignment.

But if they do create those same projects for my class, then I know what those projects are telling me. They're telling me that, in the first case, the student mostly understands x, y, and z, and can use them on demand. They're telling me that the second student has really good instincts about how to answers research questions, even if they may not fully grasp x, y, and z. I can learn more about the students' mastery of the material if I see them employ that mastery in my class, rather than trying to guess whether their use of those skills in another class shows that they know my material.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I want to see that clock ticking in my class, not wonder whether it happened to stop at the correct time on the final project's submission date.

[Descartes]

I don't know why people get all fired up about how "self-plagiarism" is not a thing. A person publishes a book. Then they write another book, and drop eight pages of chapter 2 of their first book verbatim into chapter 4 of their second book, without acknowledging it in any way. Now you could call that "re-using previously published material without acknowledgement and passing it off as new," or you could call it self-plagiarism. It's not quite the same as other plagiarism. That's why it's called self-plagiarism.

Doesn't this happen like, all the time?  To be fair it may happen far less with academic books as opposed to casual reading books, but I read online reviews all the time that say "Don't bother spending the $12; the first half is almost word for word the same as his book from 15 years ago, and the second half is only different in that it gives examples that are more current than the now-dated ones in the former book."

[Caracal]

Is it really true that a professor (or k12 teacher) cannot plagiarize a lesson plan, syllabus, etc.?   Why is this?  Under what definition of 'plagiarism' is this the case?

I recall from discussion on the Old Fora that the norms can vary considerably by field.  In certain fields where syllabus construction is a creative project of selecting readings around a narrative theme, some people seemed more apt to consider their syllabi to be personal intellectual property and to bristle at the idea of others using their syllabi wholesale (let alone without attribution -- heavens!).  In other fields, particularly STEM fields, and in courses where there's a more-or-less sequence of topics/material to be covered, more people felt like it was no big deal (or even standard) to share syllabi without a second thought. Of course, institutional norms and personalities also mattered.

It may help to reframe the question as "when does copying someone else's work harm someone?" rather than "what is plagiarism?"

When a student copies someone else's work, it harms the student, because they are not gaining the intended learning benefit from the assignment, and arguably hurts other students and the institution (be devaluing their degrees), and future employers (because the it provides false information about the knowledge and abilities of the student).

When someone publishes something that copies from someone else without attribution, it harms the original author (by denying them credit), and the copyright holder of the original work.

However, if someone borrows teaching materials that are freely shared (by colleagues, the textbook publisher, or an organization), it harms no one (so long as they are of good quality). In fact, it helps lots of people by drawing on the wisdom of many and saving precious time that can then be devoted to other important things.

For that reason, faculty in my field are generally happy to share teaching materials with colleagues. I've regularly put whole courses of slides and materials into shared folders for colleagues and had them do the same in return. You always have to adapt things to your own use, but it helps a lot.

I like that framing. If someone made extensive use my dissertation in their book (not a thing that has happened) and cited me that would be great. If they steal parts of it without attribution, not only are they denying me the credit, it might harm me if I publish a book based on it and reviewers see it as less interesting or original because they've seen the ideas elsewhere.

I don't post my lectures online, but I've shared them over the years. If others passed them on, and I found out that professor somewhere was using parts of my lecture and slides on the Great Depression, there's no reason for me to be bothered by that. Writing lectures and creating powerpoints is a pain, and it can often be a lot easier if you have something to build around. Besides, we don't really all need our own original lectures on the Great Depression.

I also don't need to be acknowledged for my role in creating the lecture. The students don't care if Dr. Caracal at Medium Cat State created many of these slides in 2016. Word isn't going to get around about my amazing lecture, leading to an exciting job opportunity.  Besides, I'm pretty sure about half of that Great Depression lecture is from something my friend sent me 8 years ago.

[Descartes]

Is it really true that a professor (or k12 teacher) cannot plagiarize a lesson plan, syllabus, etc.?   Why is this?  Under what definition of 'plagiarism' is this the case?

I recall from discussion on the Old Fora that the norms can vary considerably by field.  In certain fields where syllabus construction is a creative project of selecting readings around a narrative theme, some people seemed more apt to consider their syllabi to be personal intellectual property and to bristle at the idea of others using their syllabi wholesale (let alone without attribution -- heavens!).  In other fields, particularly STEM fields, and in courses where there's a more-or-less sequence of topics/material to be covered, more people felt like it was no big deal (or even standard) to share syllabi without a second thought. Of course, institutional norms and personalities also mattered.

It may help to reframe the question as "when does copying someone else's work harm someone?" rather than "what is plagiarism?"

When a student copies someone else's work, it harms the student, because they are not gaining the intended learning benefit from the assignment, and arguably hurts other students and the institution (be devaluing their degrees), and future employers (because the it provides false information about the knowledge and abilities of the student).

When someone publishes something that copies from someone else without attribution, it harms the original author (by denying them credit), and the copyright holder of the original work.

However, if someone borrows teaching materials that are freely shared (by colleagues, the textbook publisher, or an organization), it harms no one (so long as they are of good quality). In fact, it helps lots of people by drawing on the wisdom of many and saving precious time that can then be devoted to other important things.

For that reason, faculty in my field are generally happy to share teaching materials with colleagues. I've regularly put whole courses of slides and materials into shared folders for colleagues and had them do the same in return. You always have to adapt things to your own use, but it helps a lot.

I like that framing. If someone made extensive use my dissertation in their book (not a thing that has happened) and cited me that would be great. If they steal parts of it without attribution, not only are they denying me the credit, it might harm me if I publish a book based on it and reviewers see it as less interesting or original because they've seen the ideas elsewhere.

I don't post my lectures online, but I've shared them over the years. If others passed them on, and I found out that professor somewhere was using parts of my lecture and slides on the Great Depression, there's no reason for me to be bothered by that. Writing lectures and creating powerpoints is a pain, and it can often be a lot easier if you have something to build around. Besides, we don't really all need our own original lectures on the Great Depression.

I also don't need to be acknowledged for my role in creating the lecture. The students don't care if Dr. Caracal at Medium Cat State created many of these slides in 2016. Word isn't going to get around about my amazing lecture, leading to an exciting job opportunity.  Besides, I'm pretty sure about half of that Great Depression lecture is from something my friend sent me 8 years ago.

All of the arguments made above about the first example could easily be made for the second; when a lecture or teaching materials are copied, it harms the student, who believes they are paying for an educated expert in the subject matter to develop their own lessons, not copy from someone else.  It could be argued that it is theft, because instead of tuition money paid to your institution, a student could have simply taken a cheaper correspondence course from the original instructor.  It harms the students' future employers, because they believe the student was trained by a professional, not simply trained by using materials freely available to anyone, anywhere.

All of the logic works both ways.

[Puget]

Is it really true that a professor (or k12 teacher) cannot plagiarize a lesson plan, syllabus, etc.?   Why is this?  Under what definition of 'plagiarism' is this the case?

I recall from discussion on the Old Fora that the norms can vary considerably by field.  In certain fields where syllabus construction is a creative project of selecting readings around a narrative theme, some people seemed more apt to consider their syllabi to be personal intellectual property and to bristle at the idea of others using their syllabi wholesale (let alone without attribution -- heavens!).  In other fields, particularly STEM fields, and in courses where there's a more-or-less sequence of topics/material to be covered, more people felt like it was no big deal (or even standard) to share syllabi without a second thought. Of course, institutional norms and personalities also mattered.

It may help to reframe the question as "when does copying someone else's work harm someone?" rather than "what is plagiarism?"

When a student copies someone else's work, it harms the student, because they are not gaining the intended learning benefit from the assignment, and arguably hurts other students and the institution (be devaluing their degrees), and future employers (because the it provides false information about the knowledge and abilities of the student).

When someone publishes something that copies from someone else without attribution, it harms the original author (by denying them credit), and the copyright holder of the original work.

However, if someone borrows teaching materials that are freely shared (by colleagues, the textbook publisher, or an organization), it harms no one (so long as they are of good quality). In fact, it helps lots of people by drawing on the wisdom of many and saving precious time that can then be devoted to other important things.

For that reason, faculty in my field are generally happy to share teaching materials with colleagues. I've regularly put whole courses of slides and materials into shared folders for colleagues and had them do the same in return. You always have to adapt things to your own use, but it helps a lot.

I like that framing. If someone made extensive use my dissertation in their book (not a thing that has happened) and cited me that would be great. If they steal parts of it without attribution, not only are they denying me the credit, it might harm me if I publish a book based on it and reviewers see it as less interesting or original because they've seen the ideas elsewhere.

I don't post my lectures online, but I've shared them over the years. If others passed them on, and I found out that professor somewhere was using parts of my lecture and slides on the Great Depression, there's no reason for me to be bothered by that. Writing lectures and creating powerpoints is a pain, and it can often be a lot easier if you have something to build around. Besides, we don't really all need our own original lectures on the Great Depression.

I also don't need to be acknowledged for my role in creating the lecture. The students don't care if Dr. Caracal at Medium Cat State created many of these slides in 2016. Word isn't going to get around about my amazing lecture, leading to an exciting job opportunity.  Besides, I'm pretty sure about half of that Great Depression lecture is from something my friend sent me 8 years ago.

All of the arguments made above about the first example could easily be made for the second; when a lecture or teaching materials are copied, it harms the student, who believes they are paying for an educated expert in the subject matter to develop their own lessons, not copy from someone else.  It could be argued that it is theft, because instead of tuition money paid to your institution, a student could have simply taken a cheaper correspondence course from the original instructor.  It harms the students' future employers, because they believe the student was trained by a professional, not simply trained by using materials freely available to anyone, anywhere.

All of the logic works both ways.

Huh? This makes no sense-- Do you actually teach?
We're not talking about people taking slides from someone else and then reading them aloud to the class. When we share teaching materials, we adapt them to our own class and give our own instruction using them. Students aren't paying for us to start from scratch in developing our own teaching materials (what do you think a textbook is??), they are paying to learn. We can teach must effectively by getting ideas and materials from others who are experts-- if you are teaching a survey course, there will always be areas that aren't your particular sub-area you need to teach, so it would be malpractice not to draw on the knowledge of colleagues who are in that sub-area. All of this makes teaching better for everyone-- there are no losers here.

[AvidReader]

Both times I have taught high school, my contracts specified that materials created for my classes during my employment were the intellectual property of the school. Both times, I was asked to leave a full set of teaching materials (handouts, assignments, tests, powerpoints) for my replacements. (Neither time did I receive my predecessors' materials).

I have occasionally used powerpoints without adaptation (some of the OWL Purdue ones that have built-in grammar quizzes come to mind). Usually I acknowledge the source verbally. One (high school) class that had recently been through my citation wringer once refused to participate until I cited a powerpoint, so I wrote a works cited entry on the whiteboard below the projector, put quotation marks around the projection, and added a parenthetical citation to the side. We then had a great discussion of why my use of that material didn't count as plagiarism (just as, to agree with Puget, my use of the textbook didn't count as plagiarism).

Often when I start at a new university, established teachers share teaching materials. Where there are many instructors teaching one course (a general education class, for instance), the syllabus is usually designed by committee and shared across the department. Some schools mark the bits faculty may and may not change. At two schools (including my current one), the department syllabus for gen ed courses did not distinguish between required components and adjustable components, so my syllabus have been functionally identical to those of every other instructor.

AR.

[marshwiggle]

If someone made extensive use my dissertation in their book (not a thing that has happened) and cited me that would be great. If they steal parts of it without attribution, not only are they denying me the credit, it might harm me if I publish a book based on it and reviewers see it as less interesting or original because they've seen the ideas elsewhere.

I don't post my lectures online, but I've shared them over the years. If others passed them on, and I found out that professor somewhere was using parts of my lecture and slides on the Great Depression, there's no reason for me to be bothered by that. Writing lectures and creating powerpoints is a pain, and it can often be a lot easier if you have something to build around. Besides, we don't really all need our own original lectures on the Great Depression.

I also don't need to be acknowledged for my role in creating the lecture. The students don't care if Dr. Caracal at Medium Cat State created many of these slides in 2016. Word isn't going to get around about my amazing lecture, leading to an exciting job opportunity.  Besides, I'm pretty sure about half of that Great Depression lecture is from something my friend sent me 8 years ago.

All of the arguments made above about the first example could easily be made for the second; when a lecture or teaching materials are copied, it harms the student, who believes they are paying for an educated expert in the subject matter to develop their own lessons, not copy from someone else.  It could be argued that it is theft, because instead of tuition money paid to your institution, a student could have simply taken a cheaper correspondence course from the original instructor.  It harms the students' future employers, because they believe the student was trained by a professional, not simply trained by using materials freely available to anyone, anywhere.

All of the logic works both ways.

In lots of fields, there is a lot of material to be taught that is going to be essentially the same everywhere. If I draw a diagram of the forces on an airplane, (thrust, drag, gravity, lift), it will be effectively identical to the ones drawn by every other person teaching the same stuff. For that reason, I've put creative commons licenses on my stuff because it's ridiculous that  so much time is wasted on that. If someone else wants to use one of my diagrams, which is exactly like they would have to produce themselves, FINE AND DANDY. I don't need credit; it was a waste of 10 minutes (or whatever) of my time to make it simply to avoid copyright problems. I'm happy to pay it forward so that no-one else has to waste another 10 minutes (or whatever).

[Descartes]

Is it really true that a professor (or k12 teacher) cannot plagiarize a lesson plan, syllabus, etc.?   Why is this?  Under what definition of 'plagiarism' is this the case?

I recall from discussion on the Old Fora that the norms can vary considerably by field.  In certain fields where syllabus construction is a creative project of selecting readings around a narrative theme, some people seemed more apt to consider their syllabi to be personal intellectual property and to bristle at the idea of others using their syllabi wholesale (let alone without attribution -- heavens!).  In other fields, particularly STEM fields, and in courses where there's a more-or-less sequence of topics/material to be covered, more people felt like it was no big deal (or even standard) to share syllabi without a second thought. Of course, institutional norms and personalities also mattered.

It may help to reframe the question as "when does copying someone else's work harm someone?" rather than "what is plagiarism?"

When a student copies someone else's work, it harms the student, because they are not gaining the intended learning benefit from the assignment, and arguably hurts other students and the institution (be devaluing their degrees), and future employers (because the it provides false information about the knowledge and abilities of the student).

When someone publishes something that copies from someone else without attribution, it harms the original author (by denying them credit), and the copyright holder of the original work.

However, if someone borrows teaching materials that are freely shared (by colleagues, the textbook publisher, or an organization), it harms no one (so long as they are of good quality). In fact, it helps lots of people by drawing on the wisdom of many and saving precious time that can then be devoted to other important things.

For that reason, faculty in my field are generally happy to share teaching materials with colleagues. I've regularly put whole courses of slides and materials into shared folders for colleagues and had them do the same in return. You always have to adapt things to your own use, but it helps a lot.

I like that framing. If someone made extensive use my dissertation in their book (not a thing that has happened) and cited me that would be great. If they steal parts of it without attribution, not only are they denying me the credit, it might harm me if I publish a book based on it and reviewers see it as less interesting or original because they've seen the ideas elsewhere.

I don't post my lectures online, but I've shared them over the years. If others passed them on, and I found out that professor somewhere was using parts of my lecture and slides on the Great Depression, there's no reason for me to be bothered by that. Writing lectures and creating powerpoints is a pain, and it can often be a lot easier if you have something to build around. Besides, we don't really all need our own original lectures on the Great Depression.

I also don't need to be acknowledged for my role in creating the lecture. The students don't care if Dr. Caracal at Medium Cat State created many of these slides in 2016. Word isn't going to get around about my amazing lecture, leading to an exciting job opportunity.  Besides, I'm pretty sure about half of that Great Depression lecture is from something my friend sent me 8 years ago.

All of the arguments made above about the first example could easily be made for the second; when a lecture or teaching materials are copied, it harms the student, who believes they are paying for an educated expert in the subject matter to develop their own lessons, not copy from someone else.  It could be argued that it is theft, because instead of tuition money paid to your institution, a student could have simply taken a cheaper correspondence course from the original instructor.  It harms the students' future employers, because they believe the student was trained by a professional, not simply trained by using materials freely available to anyone, anywhere.

All of the logic works both ways.

Huh? This makes no sense-- Do you actually teach?
We're not talking about people taking slides from someone else and then reading them aloud to the class. When we share teaching materials, we adapt them to our own class and give our own instruction using them. Students aren't paying for us to start from scratch in developing our own teaching materials (what do you think a textbook is??), they are paying to learn. We can teach must effectively by getting ideas and materials from others who are experts-- if you are teaching a survey course, there will always be areas that aren't your particular sub-area you need to teach, so it would be malpractice not to draw on the knowledge of colleagues who are in that sub-area. All of this makes teaching better for everyone-- there are no losers here.

The reason it makes no sense is the same reason it makes no sense to tell a student they can't reuse papers.  It's not likely that a prompt will be exactly the same in two different classes.  I see nothing wrong from a moral perspective with a student taking a previously written paper and using substantial parts of it but tweaking it for the current course.

[RatGuy]

The reason it makes no sense is the same reason it makes no sense to tell a student they can't reuse papers.  It's not likely that a prompt will be exactly the same in two different classes.  I see nothing wrong from a moral perspective with a student taking a previously written paper and using substantial parts of it but tweaking it for the current course.

At my school, reusing work is expressly forbidden by the student code of conduct, and instructors are mandated to forward such recycled assignments to the office for academic misconduct. You might see nothing wrong with such a student's actions, but would you similarly defy university policy?

[downer]

Actually it seems likely that prompts will be very similar from one course to another, if professors are recycling each other's courses. And even if they are not recycling, they often don't make much effort to make paper topics very distinctive. That's why the paper-mill sites do so well, that a lot of professors are giving very predictable paper topics.

I do know that my policy is that if papers run through turnitin have high similarity ratings with something in their database, I'm going to come down heavy on them. That's what students need to avoid. Saying "I'm using work I wrote for another class" won't be a good excuse for them. If they are using something they wrote but they never submitted to any professor, it doesn't make any practical difference.

[marshwiggle]

Actually it seems likely that prompts will be very similar from one course to another, if professors are recycling each other's courses. And even if they are not recycling, they often don't make much effort to make paper topics very distinctive.

But unless someone is re-taking a course, it's especially weird to think that the prompt in one course would be exactly the same as the prompt in another course that isn't excluded for someone having taken the first one. That degree of overlap is extremely shoddy at the department level.