Plagiarism exists when someone else’s words are found in your paper without proper quotes and references. Plagiarism is a taboo subject in many research centres. Senior researchers, whose names often appear as the third or fourth author in a paper, do not need to be told. Their reputation is at stake. They know only too well the hefty price one pays when caught. They have heard the tale of the faculty dean high up in the research ladder who had to resign because someone found out that he had plagiarised in a paper he wrote 20 years earlier, while he was still a junior researcher.
Vladimir Toldoff told off again “Vladimir!”
The finger of Popov, his supervisor, points to a sentence in the third paragraph of Vlad’s introduction in the paper published 3 months earlier in a good journal.
“Yes, anything wrong?”
“The English in this paragraph about Leontiev’s algorithm is too good. These are not your sentences.”
“Um, let me see. Ah, yes, it is rather good, isn’t it! I must have been in great writing shape that day. I remember (Continued)
(Continued) noticing how well I had worded that paragraph when I cut and pasted it into my paper from my reading notes.” “Would it be too much to ask you to bring your reading notes?”
“You have access to them already. I left you the files after the review meeting last month.”
“Oh yes. That’s right. Let’s have a look on my computer … . Here are your notes on Leontiev’s work. Vlad, this looks like a ‘cut and paste’ segment to me, a cut and paste seg- ment without proper quotes.”
“Are you sure?” Vladimir asks.
“It’s easy to see; let me retrieve Leontiev’s paper from the electronic library. Just a minute. Here it is. Let me copy a sentence from your paragraph and do a string search on Leontiev’s paper and … well, well, well! What do we have here?! An exact copy of the original!”
“Oh NO!” Vladimir turns red. But, he recovers quickly and smiles widely. “It’s fine! Look! I put a reference to Leon- tiev’s work right at the end of the paragraph. A reference is the same as a quote, isn’t it? After all, Leontiev should be happy. I am increasing his citation count. He will not come and bother me by claiming that these words are his, not mine.”
Popov remains silent. He retrieves from the top of his in- tray basket what looks like an official letter and reads it out loud.
“Dear Sir,
One of my students has brought to my attention that a cer- tain Vladimir Toldoff who works in your research centre has not had the courtesy to quote me in his recent paper, but (Continued)
(Continued) instead has claimed my words to be his (see paragraph 3 of his introduction). I am disappointed that a prestigious institute like yours does not carefully check its papers prior to publication. I expect to receive from your institute and from Mr Toldoff a letter of apology, with a copy forwarded to the editor of the journal.
I hope this is the last time such misconduct will occur. Signed, Professor Leontiev.”
When plagiarism occurs, it is often due to a less than perfect methodology to collect and annotate the background material. Keep- ing relevant documentation about the information source when cap- turing information electronically is simply good practice.
Plagiarism is very subtle. One may think that by changing a word here and there, one gets rid of plagiarism. However, this is not the case. Literature has a term for this bad practice: “patchwork plagiarism”. One may also think that one does not plagiarise if one changes every word except the keywords in successive sentences (thus keeping the meaning of these sentences identical). Again, this is not the case. What is protected is not just the words, but also the succession of ideas in successive sentences. Indeed, if I translated a passage in French, all of the words would be different, but I would still be plagiarising. The ideas expressed in successive sentences would be exactly the same. In short, the only way to avoid plagiarising is to completely rewrite without looking at the original document, or to restructure ideas and add value by reordering them according to a different point of view: your point of view.
Even subtler is plagiarism of oneself. You might think that it is unnecessary to quote a sentence from one of your earlier publications. But, is this really the case? Did you write the paper alone, or were there coauthors? How would they feel if their work was not recognised?
Furthermore, you are often asked to assign your copyright to the journal, in which case the reproduction rights of your article no longer belong to you. Copying large chunks of your past publications (including visuals) would constitute a breach of copyright, unless it is authorised.
All publishers have someone dealing with permissions. I had to send countless e-mails and faxes to receive the permission to quote the examples used in this book. Some publishers responded promptly, while others took more than a month. Some publishers allow you, in their contract, to republish your article in whole or in parts (for example, on your website), but there are always restrictions. To retain more rights, some writers pay a publication fee (about US$1500 per article in 2007) to publish in open access journals. The added advan- tage is that open access articles appear to be cited more often (see http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html).
The lure and anonymity of the web may be so tempting that sentences, even visuals, get copied here and there. However, free or open access does not imply free right of use for everyone. Sometimes, data, text corpora, photos, and video frames may be available online to allow researchers to benchmark their algorithms; but unless per- mission to reproduce is granted by the owners of the benchmark, copying these in their original form is not legal, even in situations where you copy only part of the data or image.
Quoting is good practice. Adding quotes shows that you have read the papers you refer to or compare. When you give credit where credit is due, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Science is the fruit of collective work. Quoting scientists who have been published, particularly if they are well respected, adds credibility to your own work. It makes your work more authoritative. If you do not share their views, quoting what you object to cannot be disputed. You do not interpret; you cite.
Observe how Professor Feibelman quotes others.
“In apparent support of the half-dissociated overlayer, Pirug, Ritke, and Bonzel’s x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) study of H2O/Ru(0001) ‘revealed a state at 531.3 eV binding
energy which is close to [that] of adsorbed hydroxyl groups’ (28).”a
Note how skilfully he quotes from another report, while at the same time he hints (using the word “apparent”) that the support is not there at all. Indeed, the next sentence (not shown here) starts with “However” and confirms the lack of support.