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[whiteknight]

From "The Plagiarism Hunter," by Paula Wasley:

Mr. Gunasekera and his lawyer maintain that what Mr. Matrka has unearthed is not plagiarism, but rather some sloppy citation practices. The students may have omitted a few references, forgotten a few brackets or quotation marks. "They should have been more careful," he says, but there was no intent to deceive, and therefore no plagiarism.

More importantly, says Mr. Gunasekera, the responsibility for plagiarism, along with corresponding sanctions, should stop with the student guilty of plagiarizing. "The only person who knows 100 percent that they plagiarized is the person who plagiarizes," he says.

Otherwise, he says, faculty members are left with the impossible task of policing students' every word. "There's a vast amount of literature out there. It's hard for me to know what's taken from where," he says. "It's not that easy to find plagiarism."

The scandal has prompted discussion at Ohio and elsewhere about judging plagiarism. Some academics, like Hajrudin Pasic, a professor in Ohio's mechanical-engineering department, suggest that the standard academic definitions of plagiarism are too broad, particularly when applied to fields like engineering.

Most of the plagiarism found at Ohio, he notes, occurred in introductory chapters describing research methods and reviewing the previous literature in the field, for which there is little expectation of originality. And all but a few cases involved international students who, he says, whether through ignorance, laziness, or cultural misunderstanding, may have either not known correct citation practices or, struggling to write in a foreign language, been tempted to borrow another student's words.

Although he does not condone the errors, Mr. Pasic and his peers draw distinctions between plagiarism in introductory chapters and the far graver sin of plagiarism or fabrication of research results. It would be unfair, he says, to revoke a student's degree for such a minor offense. "For the introductory part [of his thesis], a student spends seven days, and for his research part, a student spends two years," he says. "He or she didn't graduate based on whatever he wrote in the introduction."

Some of the folks at Plagiarism University (aka Ohio University) take a pretty broad definition of scholarship. Too bad other disciplines can't copy twelve pages of another scholar's work and let it slide so easily.

[snape]

Most of the plagiarism found at Ohio, he notes, occurred in introductory chapters describing research methods and reviewing the previous literature in the field, for which there is little expectation of originality. And all but a few cases involved international students who, he says, whether through ignorance, laziness, or cultural misunderstanding, may have either not known correct citation practices or, struggling to write in a foreign language, been tempted to borrow another student's words.

Perhaps a boilerplate literature review/ discussion of research methods could be written for each discipline, then we just paste into every book/ articles we write. Would save a lot of time in the long run.

[whiteknight]

Maybe the folks at Kissyface can come up with something.

[smart_e_pantz]

Maybe the folks at Kissyface can come up with something.

DONE!

[larryc]

"They should have been more careful," he says, but there was no intent to deceive, and therefore no plagiarism.

NO!  Intent is irrelevant, if you present someone's words as your own, you are a plagiarist. How appalling that an academic pretends not to know that.

[crazybatlady]

I love the line (sorry I don't have the direct quote) that suggests everyone does this kind of thing.  Something like, if you look closely at any university, you'd find this kind of plagiarism.

Hm.

[prof_mom]

Really, if someone else has said exactly what you want to say, why should you have to rephrase it? We should just be able to copy the literature review insert methods and then maybe add a thing or two for the conclusion. It really would save a lot of work. Maybe we could ask people to insert relevant citations to the boilerplate literature review section as soon as they are published so we could make sure it stays updated.

I had a student turn in a PC magazine article word for word. He didn't even change the introduction to reflect that it was a paper for a class. he said he just didn't feel like he could do justice to explaining how the technology worked and this article had done it so well. Maybe at Kissyface, we could just ask them to select the article they thought best explained their thoughts on the topic instead of asking them to write something on their own.

[kaysixteen]

obviously the Ohio U people were really lame in their defense of the plagiarism situation in that department.  Clearly wholesale heads should be rolling there, starting with the dean who, when presented with a stack of plagiarised theses, refused to read them.

However, it gets me to thinking-- how common is this?  How many other grad departments' theses/ dissertations collections would yield up such evidence, should anyone deign to look for it?

[bibliologos]

Maybe at Kissyface, we could just ask them to select the article they thought best explained their thoughts on the topic instead of asking them to write something on their own.

But that would require them to demonstrate critical thinking skills.  They should just be asked to select any article/textbook chapter/wikipedia entry that vaguely relates to the topic at hand.

[snape]

The real problem is having to read exisiting literature on the subject. Perhaps we should just write what we think about a subject.

[francie_]

I loved the "cultural misunderstanding" excuse the best.  Many moons ago, I saw with my own eyes the corrected draft of a dissertation by a foreign grad student in which the first two chapters had been copied from someone else's diss in their entirety.  The adviser had drawn a perfectly straight diagonal line across each and every offending page.  As I remember, the rewrite was only marginally different, but enough to satisfy the adviser.  This case was particularly egregious, but I wonder how many other similar "borrowings" have never been caught. 

Along with TOFEL, I think foreign grad students should be tested on their knowledge of plagiarism and proper citation methods.  Heck, maybe all graduate students need to be tested.  This might be the best place to draw the line (perfectly straight of course) in the sand.

And what is this about expecting Kissyface College students to look up articles!?!  Really, people.  Do you actually expect KFC students to do their own research?  Don't you know the Kissyface Consumer Help Specialists (aka professors) are required to give the students articles that will best reflect the students' ideas on a topic?  It's only fair; the students are paying for good service.

[larryc]

Perhaps we should just write what we think about a subject.

Shame on you! So-called "writing" and "literacy" are Eurocentric hegemonic heteronormative tools of the oppressor.  At Kissyface College students must be free to express what they think through alternative, indigenous, holistic communicative strategies such as interpretive dance, finger-painting, and beer pong.

[prof_mom]

And what is this about expecting Kissyface College students to look up articles!?!  Really, people.  Do you actually expect KFC students to do their own research?  Don't you know the Kissyface Consumer Help Specialists (aka professors) are required to give the students articles that will best reflect the students' ideas on a topic?  It's only fair; the students are paying for good service.

Oh, I was misunderstood. Perhaps this is also a cultural misunderstanding.

I meant that we could provide a  few articles on a topic and the student could look at the summaries and pick the one that best reflects their opinion on a topic. Remember that we cannot force students to accept our opinions, or even express them in the classroom, or we risk being accused of brainwashing them. Thus, we must allow students some choices without requiring them to assume any responsibility that is traditionally associated with choice.

Also, I prefer beer golf to beer pong and I don't think you can expect the students to do anything that might be considered exercise or require motion. We do not want the poor students to exhaust themselves and we can't  expect them to log off IM for long enough to learn, or create, a dance.

I have seen a similar thing to what Francie described. My advisor sent me a copy of an article he was co-authoring with a grad student and asked me for comments. He said that the student had been diligently reading my dissertation and my advisor  wanted to make sure that he hadn't missed any other literature. I pointed out to my advisor that 2 pages had been basically copied from my dissertation, including quotations and interpretations of them and my dissertation was not even cited. My advisor responded that he thought it had looked familiar. HA!

[kaysixteen]

What incentive would an academic department have to allow its grad students, Americans or foreign nationals, to plagiarize theses or dissertations?  Seems a school should have every reason to want to root this out.... but maybe I am naive.

[larryc]

What incentive would an academic department have to allow its grad students, Americans or foreign nationals, to plagiarize theses or dissertations?  Seems a school should have every reason to want to root this out.... but maybe I am naive.

Because heads are going to roll.  The school will indeed want to root this out, starting with dismissing some of the lazy professors who were not even reading the theses and dissertations that they approved.