Academic honesty: the problem of plagiarism

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Academic honesty the problem of plagiarism

• Hon 101

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What is plagiarism?

• From the Latin plagiare ("to kidnap")
• Plagiarism is use of words or ideas from another
  source without proper attribution
• It is not borrowing or even copying, but
  improper use i.e.
• It is stealing

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Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

• to "plagiarize"
• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of
  another) as one's own
• to use (another's production) without crediting
  the source
• to commit literary theft
• to present as new and original an idea or product
  derived from an existing source.
• In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It
  involves both stealing someone else's work (or
  even your own work) and lying about it
  afterward.
• Self-plagiarism

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What words or ideas are included?

• Words or ideas published in a magazine, book,
  newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page,
  computer program, letter, advertisement, or any
  other medium
• Information you gain through personal
  communication with others through interviewing,
  conversation, over the phone, through email or
  text messaging
• Diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or
  other visual materials that you reproduce
  including reposting any electronically-available
  media, such as digital images or audio

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What words or ideas are excluded?

• your own lived experiences, dreams or thoughts
• your own observations and insights, and your own
  conclusions about a subject
• the results of your own primary research from lab
  experiments, fieldwork, surveys etc.
• your own creative work such as graphics, digital
  photographs, video, audio, etc.
• "common knowledge folklore, common sense,
  myths, urban legends, and historical events
• generally-accepted facts, including those that
  are accepted within particular discourse
  communities

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Common knowledge

• Yes
• Franz Liszt was the most gifted of the child
  prodigies making their mark in Europe in the
  mid-nineteenth century
• This is a commonly accepted fact.
• No
• Franz Liszts talent was cultivated by his father
  who encouraged him, at age six, to play the piano
  from memory, to sight-read music and, above all,
  to improvise.
• We only know that from the research report in
  Alan Walker's book Franz Liszt The Virtuoso
  Years (Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1983)
• Uncommon facts and interpretations of others must
  be cited

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Who plagiarizes?

• What proportion of students admit to cheating?
• 80 of "high-achieving" high school students
  admit to cheating.
• 75 of college students admitted cheating,
• What proportion think it wrong
• 51 of high school students did not believe
  cheating was wrong.
• 85 of college students said cheating was
  necessary to get ahead
• What are the risks of being caught
• 95 of cheating high school students said that
  they had not been detected.
• 90 of college students didn't believe cheaters
  would be caught.

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More evidence

• 72 of students reported one or more instances of
  serious cheating on written work
• 15 had submitted a paper obtained in large part
  from a term paper mill or website
• 52 had copied a few sentences from a website w/o
  citing the source
• 90 of the students using the internet to
  plagiarize had also plagiarized from written
  sources
• McCabe, D. L., Trevino, L. K. (1996). "What we
  know about cheating in college Longitudinal
  trends and recent developments." Change, 28(1),
  28-33.

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Where are the plagiarizers?

• Levels of cheating 
• Very low              Very high

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Why do students plagiarize?

• lack confidence of their own ideas
• lack time to complete their papers due to poor
  time-management skills
• Academic writing is inherently challenging if not
  downright contradictory
• Students may not understand the nature and
  consequences of plagiarism
• Instructors provide assignments for which generic
  responses are available
• Instructors fail to report cheating when it
  occurs
• Institutions may not enforce appropriate
  penalties

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Mixed messages in academic writing

• College writing assignments require students
• Develop a topic based on what has already been
  said and written, but also
• write something new and original
• Rely on opinions of experts and authorities on a
  topic, but also
• improve upon and/or disagree with those same
  opinions
• Give credit to researchers who have come before
  you, but also
• make your own significant contribution
• Use the language of a discourse community, but
  also
• use your own words and your own voice

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Understanding plagiarism

• In many cases students lack the knowledge of and
  skills to properly use the academic conventions
  of authorial attribution.
• Some sources of confusion
• There are inconsistent definitions of plagiarism
  in high school and college contexts
• There are different expectations regarding
  authorial attribution between some professional
  and academic contexts (e.g. report writing versus
  refereed publication)
• Students are not fully trained and integrated
  into academic culture
• Students from other cultures may not be familiar
  with the conventions governing attribution in the
  U.S. context

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Culture

• Not all cultures take the same view of
  plagiarism. The Western notion that "ideas" can
  be the property of individuals may actually seem
  absurd to those with different views on what
  constitutes shared information or public
  discourse. Students from cultures which have a
  more collective sense of identity, for example,
  may have a difficult time understanding the
  distinctions some cultures draw between
  individual and public property.
• Plagiarism.org
• http//www.plagiarism.org/learning_center/educatio
  nal_tips.html

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Why does it matter?

• Plagiarism hurts everyone involved
• plagiarists themselves do not acquire the skills
  legitimate work would teach them, and risk
  failure and expulsion
• classmates have to compete with cheats for their
  grades, and for jobs and admissions
• cheating may contribute to grade inflation
• teachers have to take time out of the education
  process to deal with the problem
• it undermines the principles upon which
  universities are founded

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Avoiding plagiarism

• 1. Develop note-taking skills
• 2. Develop paraphrasing skills
• 3. Use quotations correctly

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1. Note-taking

• Always mark quotations using quotation marks
• Indicate in your notes which ideas are taken from
  sources and which are your own insights (mine
  or me)
• Record all sources in your notes (use name, date,
  page number)
• Record all references in a bibliography as you
  use them

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2. Paraphrases and summaries

• Use a statement that credits the source somewhere
  in the paraphrase or summary, e.g., According to
  Jonathan Kozol, ....
• Try writing a your paraphrase without looking at
  the original, using memory and notes
• Check your paraphrase against the original text
  correct any errors in content accuracy
• Put quotation marks around any unique words or
  phrases that you cannot or do not want to change,
  e.g., "savage inequalities" exist throughout our
  educational system (Kozol).

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3. Using quotations 1

• Keep the source author's name in the same
  sentence as the quote
• Mark the quote with quotation marks, or set it
  off from your text in its own block, per the
  style guide your paper follows
• Quote no more material than is necessary if a
  short phrase from a source will suffice, don't
  quote an entire paragraph
• To shorten quotes by removing extra information,
  use ellipsis points (...) to indicate omitted
  text, keeping in mind that
• MLA style requires ellipsis points to appear in
  brackets, e.g., ....
• three ellipsis points indicates an in-sentence
  ellipsis, and four points for an ellipsis between
  two sentences

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3. Using quotations 2

• To give context to a quote or otherwise add
  wording to it, place added words in square
  brackets be careful not to editorialize or make
  any additions that skew the original meaning of
  the quote, e.g.,
• OK Kozol claims there are "savage inequalities"
  in our educational system, which is obvious.
• WRONG Kozol claims there are "obvious savage
  inequalities" in our educational system.
• Use quotes that will have the most rhetorical,
  impact in your paper too many direct quotes from
  sources may weaken your credibility, as though
  you have nothing to say yourself, and will
  certainly interfere with your style. No more
  than 10!

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The original text

• Lizzie Borden A Case Book of Family and Crime in
  the 1890s by Joyce Williams et al.
• The rise of industry, the growth of cities, and
  the expansion of the population were the three
  great developments of late nineteenth century
  American history. As new, larger, steam-powered
  factories became a feature of the American
  landscape in the East, they transformed farm
  hands into industrial laborers, and provided jobs
  for a rising tide of immigrants. With industry
  came urbanization the growth of large cities
  (like Fall River, Massachusetts, where the
  Bordens lived) which became the centers of
  production as well as of commerce and trade

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The plagiarized version

• The increase of industry, the growth of
  cities, and the explosion of the population were
  three large factors of nineteenth century
  America. As steam-driven companies became more
  visible in the eastern part of the country, they
  changed farm hands into factory workers and
  provided jobs for the large wave of immigrants.
  With industry came the growth of large cities
  like Fall River where the Bordens lived which
  turned into centers of commerce and trade as well
  as production.
• What makes this passage plagiarism?
• the writer has only changed around a few words
  and phrases, or changed the order of the
  originals sentences.
• the writer has failed to cite a source for any of
  the ideas or facts

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An acceptable paraphrase

• Fall River, where the Borden family lived, was
  typical of northeastern industrial cities of the
  nineteenth century. Steam-powered production had
  shifted labor from agriculture to manufacturing,
  and as immigrants arrived in the US, they found
  work in these new factories. As a result,
  populations grew, and large urban areas arose.
  Fall River was one of these manufacturing and
  commercial centers (Williams 1)

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Acceptable quote and paraphrase

• Fall River, where the Borden family lived, was
  typical of northeastern industrial cities of the
  nineteenth century. As steam-powered production
  shifted labor from agriculture to manufacturing,
  the demand for workers "transformed farm hands
  into industrial laborers," and created jobs for
  immigrants. In turn, growing populations
  increased the size of urban areas. Fall River was
  one of these hubs "which became the centers of
  production as well as of commerce and trade"
  (Williams 1).

Example from http//www.indiana.edu/wts/pamphlet
s/plagiarism.shtmlplagiarized
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Policing plagiarism

• Plagiarism.org
• online resource on the growing problem of
  internet plagiarism
• http//www.plagiarism.org/
• Turnitin
• comprehensive plagiarism prevention system lets
  instructors check student work
• http//www.turnitin.com/
• iThenticate
• Protects against intellectual property
• http//www.ithenticate.com/static/home.html