It is THAT time of year again. Term papers are due, and teachers are
coming to me two or three a day. They have done their best to track down
plagiarism in a number of assignments, but they still have reservations
about a handful more, can I help? Sometimes.
I have just had a borderline plagiarism case referred to me. The
student had named one of his sources fairly early on, but the paper
arguably showed a over-dependence on that single source. There appeared
to be some paraphrasing of the original text, though only two sentences
stood out as word-for-word lifting with no quotation marks. I could
find no plagiarism in the rest of the paper – about 66% of the essay.
(This of course does not mean there is no plagiarism, only that none was
found). Indeed, the larger part of the paper was looking into the
future, speculating on likely developments. It was the sections which
dealt with historical aspects which were taken, directly or indirectly,
from the cited source. To make it even more marginal, the student had
used those lifts and paraphrases to build his own case – it was not a
matter of blind and thoughtless lifting.
For better or worse, the teacher and I agreed that we needed to speak
with the student, demonstrate where and how and why he had gone wrong,
and drop him a grade. We felt there was no intent to deceive, and that
the student should be penalized for sloppy technique rather than
punished for plagiarism. We have cases enough where the plagiarism is
blatant and the student all too aware of what s/he was doing and hoping
to hide, and this paper did not deserve the same treatment.
Now the dilemma: I found the original, cited, document easily enough;
there was no attempt to hide it or to deceive. It was part of a
personal web site, a chapter from a well-reviewed and authoritative
published book which is currently out of print – but the second edition
of which which will be published later this year: the web site gave
further information about the book and further samples of its contents.
The trouble is, I found two other web sites which used this chapter, and
they used it in full. What was missing from these two sites was the
name of the original author and any linkage to the site or to the book.
The intention in both cases appeared to be to claim the work as
original. Further twists: one URL is that of a high school in the
States, and the work is probably the personal page of a student at that
school. The second URL leads to a College of Education; this posting
of the unattributed material appears to have been posted by a student
teacher. In year 2000. [There is even a third posting on the web, a
doctoral thesis which uses just two paragraphs from the original work,
but it is direct lifting, without quotation marks and without
attribution – which in my book equals plagiarism (and may suggest
further investigation of the rest of the paper would not be amiss).]
So the question is, is it my responsibility to blow the whistle? If the
high school teacher, the school of education tutor, the doctoral panel,
did not discover plagiarism, should I put this in their minds? Is it my
duty to tell the author of the original book/ web site that his work
appears to have been mis-used? In this particular case, because the
original site is a come-on for the book, it is not just a case of
“simple” plagiarism; the breach of copyright could be held to affect
sales of the book, and thus punitive damages might be sought against the
plagiarists.
I think I know the answer to my question – but it would be assuring to
hear what colleagues and peers have to say. What would YOU do? What DO
you do?
John Royce
Library Director : Robert College of Istanbul
TR-80820 Arnavutköy - Istanbul
Turkey
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