Plagiarism Issues Patchwork

This document is not a research paper or academic publication. It offers points for discussion related to our academic responsibility to make policy and develop appropriate pedagogy in regard to plagiarism at our colleges. It is a patchwork of excerpts of articles and case studies from a variety of Internet sources. As such, it is submitted to you in electronic format so that you are able to take the links to the original sources and to additional resources on the topic. With regard to the original sources linked to this patchwork, please take care to respect academic conventions for dissemination of published work as well as copyright law as it is applicable to educational use.

Let’s start here with an excerpt from an address by Rebecca Moore Howard (Syracuse University) to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, in Denver in 2001, entitled “Plagiarism: What Should a Teacher Do?” (© 2001), which suggests looking at plagiarism as a variety of different source recording errors rather than assuming attempted fraud.

So, before going on with the rest of this research, please read her complete address, which frames the discussion about the nature and causes of plagiarism in the era of electronic publishing.

Citations and excerpts framing the discussion on the nature of plagiarism in contemporary academic writing

First, take this multiple choice test by correctly identifying the source of the following passage:

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing happiness and safety.”

Susan Lawrence. "Watching the Watchers." Science News 119 (1981): 3+.
Although virtually all scientists agree that data falsification and plagiarism are cardinal sins in research, opinions differ on how common they are and on what their causes may be. Furthermore, no one seems quite sure how they can be detected or prevented without damaging an already stressed research system . . . Ironically enough, the one point virtually everyone discussing the issue agrees on is that there are no data on the incidence of fakery in scientific research. That lack of data makes it difficult for the scientific world to offer an effective response . . .

Anthony DePalma. "Plagiarism Seen by Scholars in King's Ph.D. Dissertation" New York Times 11 Oct 1990: A1.
Torn between loyalty to his subject and to his discipline, the editor of the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reluctantly acknowledged yesterday that substantial parts of Dr. King's doctoral dissertation and other academic papers from his student years appeared to have been plagiarized. . . .

"By the strictest definition of plagiarism -- that is, any appropriation of words or ideas -- there are instances of plagiarism in these papers." . . .

"Becoming Martin Luther King, Jr.: An Introduction." Journal of American History 78 (1991): 11-22.
Instead of viewing this news as an opportunity to probe how and why a great American used language in this way at this time and place, most commentators worried instead about how much King’s plagiarism diminished his greatness and heroism. In reading many of these accounts, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that commentators were simply trying to decide how many points they should subtract from King's greatness score. . . .

The language that King knew best, as Keith Miller shows in the accompanying essay, was the oral language of the African-American pulpit. Even when he crossed borders into other worlds, King envisioned interaction between speaker and audience in ways he had learned from the folk pulpit. In this oral tradition, repetition was highly valued because it assured that knowledge would be remembered. . . .

Philip J. Hilts. "Plagiarists Take Note: Machine's On Guard." New York Times 7 Jan. 1992: C1.
Few figures in science have engendered more emotion than Walter Stewart and Dr. Ned Feder -- and that was before they invented their little "plagiarism machine."

"You put the papers in here," Mr. Stewart said as he bent forward and peered through thick glasses bound to his head by a rubber band. The scanner digests the paper, transforming it into a computer file ready for the test.

. . . "I find it chilling," said Dr. Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution, a research organization in Washington. "We don't normally in our society go looking for behavior not consistent with accepted practices. The whole system is designed to protect people. I don't know why in science we have to do these more threatening kinds of things."

Mr. Stewart and Dr. Feder "may be well-intentioned," Dr. Singer said, but she does not make the same allowance for their machine. "Of the various uses modern technology would be put to, this machine is one we didn't expect. We would have expected the C.I.A. or Interpol to use it, not scientists."

Rebecca Moore Howard. "Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty." College English 57 (1995): 788-806.
Hypertext makes visible what literary critics have theorized: the cumulative, interactive nature of writing that makes impossible the representation of a stable category of authorship and hence a stable category of plagiarism. . . . The Internet user surfs through a universe of information, stumbling quite by accident upon all sorts of materials without knowing quite how he or she got there or how to get home again. Citing data from such sources can pose near-impossible challenges for the writer. And when any of these phenomena occur in hypertext, with its multiple authors whose contributions are untraceable, the matter becomes hopelessly entangled.

Turnitin.com [home page] 18 October 2001. Found through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (retrieved 23 Dec. 2004).
This is the new website for Turnitin.com, the world's leading intellectual property protection service for education. Our service is designed to assist both educators and students concerned with the growing problem of Internet plagiarism. Turnitin.com has proven itself, both in independent comparison tests and through successful implementation in academic institutions across the globe, to be the only reliable means of tracking student misuse of intellectual property on the Web

Nick Carbone. "Turnitin.com, a Pedagogic Placebo for Plagairism." Bedford/St. Martin's Technotes. 5 June 2001. (retrieved 23 Dec. 2004).
Turnitin.com keeps a copy of every paper submitted and adds it to their database. Students have no choice in the matter; if a professor submits a student's paper for a check, it's archived -- essentially inhouse-published -- for future use by the Turnitin.com database. The Turnitin.com privacy policy and user agreement say nothing on this that I could find. And that in itself is problematic in my view. . . .

With Turnitin.com, students' work is captured and held without their permission. This goes against the grain of most writing pedagogy, which premises that students are 'authors' and 'authorities' and owners of their own work (coincidentally, the assumption used to establish copyright). It also goes against the grain of one's right to their intellectual property that Turnitin.com, in its pursuit of plagiarists, seeks to uphold. So using Turnitin.com presents students with a double standard.

Excerpts below from “Technology and Teaching: Thinking and Talking About Plagiarism” by Nick Carbone: http://bedfordstmartins.com/technotes/techtiparchive/ttip102401.htm

"Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers," by Robert Harris (http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm). This site offers good assignment strategies, a reminder to distinguish between intentional cheating and poor source management and integration (mistakes in paraphrasing and quoting).

I've been visiting Harris' pages for years, not only on plagiarism, but also for his advice on teaching research online. I've always found his advice sensible, balanced, and consistent. Harris is also the author of a new book on plagiarism, The Plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism (2001, from Pyrczak Publishing). Details on how to order it, the table of contents, and other information can be found at the Web site for the book, (http://www.antiplagiarism.com/).

I really like Harris's book because he reminds teachers again and again to remember the student point of view. Here are some (not all) of his major points:

Harris also reminds us that we don't need to have a copy of the plagiarized source in hand. By talking to students about the piece, how they came about writing it and where they got the ideas in it, we can learn enough to determine whether it is likely that they cheated or merely made mistakes in handling their sources. And very often, notes Harris, in the course of answering these questions about their paper's content, when the student is hemming and hawing, perhaps a little bit nervous or defensive, a gently asked, "is there anything you want to tell me?" will lead students to admit they didn't do the work.

Part 2. A Syllabus Strategy for Talking About Plagiarism with Students

It was after reading Harris's book and thinking about the many plagiarism discussions that have come up on professional listservs, and my own complaints about the kind of police-state rhetoric used by sites like Turnitin.com, that it occurred to me that the first place to begin a better discussion with my students on plagiarism is in my own syllabus. The syllabus, after all, is the contract I make with my class. It's the document that conveys my personality, my view of writing, and sets the tone and approach I want to take with my students (and them with one another). Teachers use syllabi to set parameters, to layout conditions, to explain grades. How a syllabus talks about things like grading, writing, and plagiarizing matters.

I want an open, inviting class, where students feel comfortable taking risks with their writing, have a clear idea of what I expect, and can comfortably share their work at any and every stage. But the plagiarism statement I had in the first draft of my syllabus, which I inherited from a syllabus used by a previous teacher of the course, and which is the kind of statement I've used before, worked directly against those goals. It read:

The Emerson College Statement on Plagiarism in The Emerson College Student Handbook warns that "plagiarism is the use of the words and/or ideas of another as if they were one's own and without acknowledgement of their source" (63). Please familiarize yourself with this policy by reading this section of the undergraduate catalogue.

Intentional plagiarism will not be tolerated. Any student who plagiarizes another's work will automatically fail this course. In addition, Emerson College will take disciplinary action and an official record of such action will become part of your permanent file. Plagiarism can result in probation or expulsion from the College. Most importantly, you are here to learn and gain skills that will serve you during your entire career and life; to plagiarize is to cheat yourself of this opportunity.

My conflict here is that I don't lead any other discussion with threats, so why one on plagiarism? Why start off scolding? Why build anxiety and fear when I know that I'll be asking students to learn complex literacy skills, writing skills, and academic conventions? Why make myself a state trooper to their novice driver? So I deleted the above language and swapped in this instead:

Plagiarism
You should read your student handbook. (Has anybody read it?--I've never met a student who has unless and until they have a question it answers. It's not exactly scintillating stuff.) It has all the legal warnings you'll ever want to hear. But since you're likely not going to read the handbook, let's think about plagiarism more carefully and realistically than the handbook does.

Unfortunately, the term plagiarism is more technical than practical. It's used to describe equally mistakes in handling and citing sources and deliberate cheating and lying about the authorship of the work you hand in. In fact, one refuge of many cheaters is to say that they merely made mistakes in source handling. So by plagiarism in this course I want us all to distinguish between fraud and cheating, which is always wrong, and mistakes in learning, which are inevitable, correctable, and for many people, necessary for learning. Mistakes are welcome; deliberate fraud is not.

To help explain some of these differences, and how they play out in practical terms in the course, and to give us a way to talk about these issues, I'd like to invite you to think about plagiarism as a matter of Don'ts and Do's. Some of the Do's will vary in other courses, but most all teachers will agree and assume you'll abide by the Don'ts.

We'll talk about this stuff as the course goes on.

Don'ts
Don't cheat. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't misrepresent others work as yours. Don't go to places like schoolsucks.com, evilhouseofcheat.com, termpapersrus.com, or any of the other hundreds of online and off line sources where term papers can be commissioned or bought or borrowed for <wink>research purposes only</wink>. Don't make up fake sources. Don't make up fake quotes. Don't make up fake interviews. Don't think that by copying something over and changing every couple of words that you've put it in your own words. Don't think that because something is on the Net it doesn't need to be cited. Don't think that because a lot of textbooks and other printed matter you read don't site sources that you don't have to cite them either. Don't think that because politicians have speech writers and actors have script writers who often go unacknowledged that you can get a writer to "secretary" your paper for you; rules that apply in other settings are different here, where the purpose is for you to do the writing. Don't go to the library, find a book that hasn't been checked out often, then find a source in its bibliography, and then copy that source into a paper as yours. Don't procrastinate on assignments and homework so that you end up under too much deadline pressure and become tempted to take shortcuts. Don't be afraid to come see me if you feel overwhelmed, unsure, fear missing a deadline, or start falling behind. Don't try to get around any of these Don'ts by working so hard to disguise them that you might as well have just done the Do's.

Do's
Do share ideas with one another. Do swap writing. Do help one another write. Do edit and rewrite sections of one another's papers from time to time; writers do that kind of thing all the time, and editors do it with them. Do learn to like your writing; even when it's bad, hand it in any way, and know I'll always find something to like about it. Do expect to make mistakes managing and citing sources. Do expect to correct them. Do take care in downloading sources and taking notes. Do find a way to use sources wisely and fairly. Do learn the myriad rhetorical purposes that including and citing sources can serve. Do use the word processor to help you manage sources (for example, put sources you're quoting or paraphrasing in a different font and font color until the final draft so you don't accidentally forget they came from some other writer). Do have fun with sources, think of using them as weaving, building, playing with blocks, or any other metaphor that you associate with "taking what's at hand and making something of it." Do write before, while, and after you research, but especially before. Do discover an argument so you have a distinctive voice in your own essay, and aren't overwhelmed and intimidated by sources. Do come see me whenever you have a question about the course, are feeling overwhelmed, or unhappy with an assignment or your work; we can talk and find a way to make things work.

As you can see, there are some contradictions in these lists. My students asked, "but isn't someone editing and rewriting my paper cheating?" Well, no, not if it's done right. It depends on the circumstances and the assignment, but most published writers benefit from this kind of help. Students need to learn how to manage that kind of help. (I want this to be an issue, by the way, because I know a lot of students, especially in other courses, will do what so many of us do--ask someone to proofread their paper. And sometimes that proofing is simple punctuation correction, but sometimes it gets into sentence level revisions. So it is important to know to ask, when is that okay and when is it not?)

The Don'ts and Do's also link plagiarism and cheating to writing skills (drafting, revising, editing), research skills (evaluating sources, file management, planning), and student skills (time management, talking to teachers, learning to ask for help). That is, I found the lists give me a framework for talking about plagiarism and cheating in context, as things which come from daily decisions, sometimes small, in doing the work of being a student.

I know this approach might not appeal to all teachers; certainly my list of Don'ts and Do's will not. But I found this semester that using this approach has really helped me in day-to-day workshops and discussions. It has given me a vocabulary in everyday language to talk about writing, plagiarism and cheating in a way that supports writing rather than polices students. I guess I see it as the difference between gatekeeping and hosting, between warning and inviting, between suspecting and trusting.

Central Conn. State U's policy, where they require a plagiarism workshop for first offenders: http://www.ccsu.edu/AcademicIntegrity/UndergradAcadMisconductPolicy.htm

For developing a policy that best reflects our disciplinary knowledge, it is recommended that you first consult "Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices" at: http://wpacouncil.org/positions/WPAplagiarism.pdf