Plagiarism and collusion

Ross Woods. Rev. 2018

Plagiarism and collusion are strictly forbidden in all academic work.

Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s work and presenting it as your own. It includes their direct wording, but can also extend to their distinctive ideas or use of language. An act is still plagiarism if it is unintentional, e.g. caused by failing to distinguish between direct quotes and general observations. Plagiarism takes many forms:

1. A whole document that is written by someone else.
2. For verbal material, copied word for word without quotation marks or without acknowledgement of the source.
3. For non-verbal material (e.g. photographs, music), duplicated without acknowledgement of the source.
4. Material copied word for word that is acknowledged as paraphrased but is not in quotation marks.
5. Unique terminology coined by someone else, no matter how short, without quotation marks or without acknowledgement of the source.
6. Paraphrased material (whether by recasting language, summarizing, or by using a progression of detailed ideas) without appropriate acknowledgement of its source.
7. Patchwork use of various sources, editing them into one document, without identifying the sources.
8. Incomplete referencing.
9. Language assistant editing. Some non-native speakers of English write papers themselves, but then have a language assistant edit it or even re-write the whole thing in acceptable English.
10. Use of tables, charts, and graphs from other sources without referencing.

Plagiarism can be unintentional or inadvertent, such as when you read something and then later forget that it had a source other than yourself.

Self-plagiarism

Self-plagiarism is presenting your own previous work in whole or part as if it were a new work, or submitting the same work in two concurrent units. Students can do this only with permission, and it normally needs to be referenced.

Self-plagiarism includes:

1. Offering the same manuscript to multiple publishers without telling each of the submission to the other publisher (p. 17).
2. Offering two manuscripts with overlapping content as separate manuscripts (p. 17).
3. Students submitting the same work as original work for multiple units (p. 18).
4. Offering an old manuscript with updated data as a new manuscript (p. 18).
5. Offering an old manuscript with reanalysis of the same data as a new manuscript (p. 20).
6. Offering an old manuscript with different conclusions as a new manuscript (p. 20).

Collusion

Collusion refers to work done colaboratively with other people and submitted as the student's own work. It can be:

• material that is copied from the work of another person, with her or his knowledge,
• material that is written by another person but submitted as the student's own work (ghost-writing, see also plagiarism),
• material in the which another person has given specific help that should be referenced but is not.

Collusion does not refer to:

• Work that the supervisor intends to be collaborative, for example, group projects,
• Corrections suggested by software,
• The normal input from a designated supervisor,
• General discussions with others about your work.

Collaboration

Some kinds of academic projects are intentionally collaborative. You are required to identify the work of collaborators in an academic project because the final product must be your own work. Check with your supervisor first about the procedure.

For example, you might send out documents to a variety of resource people to get feedback or check for errors. In this case, describe in full the collaboration process as part of your methodology, and make written notes of the kinds of changes suggested at this stage before you forget the details.

Some interesting perspective issues might come up that are worthy of comment and analysis. By treating feedback as a methodology, you could make their efforts an accountable part of your work as a positive aspect of the project. At least, the alternative would be to mark their comments clearly so that readers would know what was yours and what came from the collaborators. This might be necessary for longer or otherwise more substantial comments.

Penalties

In serious cases of plagiarism or collusion in submitted work and in graduate studies, the work will automatically be given a failing grade. A warning is appropriate in lesser cases, for example a minor, unintended infraction by a first-year student still learning the conventions of writing.

See also http://webs.purduecal.edu/integrity/dishonesty/definitions-plagiarism | Viewed 21 july, 2015.

Notes from Miguel Roig

Roig, Miguel. Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing Second revision, 2015 (https://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/plagiarism.pdf, viewed 15 June, 2017.)

Ethical use of referencing applies to:

1. Grant proposals, not just academic papers (p. 2).
2. Oral presentations, not just written work (p. 4).
3. Taking the idea and expressing it in different words (p. 4).
4. A casual discussion with an individual unrelated to the topic (p. 5).

Some kinds of plagiarism:

1. Unconscious plagiarism: Exposed to something and it becomes an unconscious memory (p. 5).
2. Professors taking ideas from their students (pp. 5, 6).
3. Peer reviewers taking ideas from articles or funding proposals (p. 6).
4. Taking the actual text of the original, making minor edits in word order, word usage, or syntax, and treating it as a paraphrase (p. 8).

Failure to give full references in these cases would be plagiarism. However, plagiarism does not include "common knowledge," that is, information that readers can be expected to already know.

Self-plagiarism

Self-plagiarism includes:

1. Offering the same manuscript to multiple publishers without telling each of the submission to the other publisher (p. 17).
2. Offering two manuscripts with overlapping content as separate manuscripts (p. 17).
3. Students submitting the same work as original work for multiple units (p. 18).
4. Offering an old manuscript with updated data as a new manuscript (p. 18).
5. Offering an old manuscript with reanalysis of the same data as a new manuscript (p. 20).
6. Offering an old manuscript with different conclusions as a new manuscript (p. 20).

Other unethical practices

1. Careless referencing (p. 33).
2. Citing subsequent sources rather than the original observation or discovery (p. 34).
3. Using an abstract but referencing the full article (p. 35).
4. Using a pre-publication version but referencing the published article (p. 35).
5. Referring to works of reviewers or publishers when not strictly relevant. The purpose is to get the paper accepted by enhancing the reputation of the reviewer or publisher. (p. 35).
6. Failure to report information that does not support one’s own view (p. 41).
7. Failure to report methods so that they can be fully replicated (p. 42).
8. Using professional ghost authors (p. 46).
9. Conflict of interest (pp. 46f).

A copyright implication

When plagiarism involves copyright, such as when an article is licensed to a publisher, the plagiarist violates ownership of the work.