3Qs: Catching the copier

A well-​​respected German defense min­ister resigned recently after he admitted that parts of his 2006 doc­toral thesis repeated pas­sages by other authors without proper cita­tion. These days, copying and pasting makes it easier than ever to pla­gia­rize, espe­cially in acad­emia, where papers, projects and dis­ser­ta­tions are written every day. Brenda Berke­laar, a pro­fessor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion studies at North­eastern, clar­i­fies what pla­gia­rism is, how to pre­vent it, and how the short-​​term reper­cus­sions can have lasting effects.

What is pla­gia­rism, and how can you rec­og­nize it?

Pla­gia­rism occurs when an author, or a group of authors, rep­re­sents someone else’s words, data, photos, music, sounds or other infor­ma­tion as their own cre­ation or work; that is, the author fails to cite the orig­inal author(s) of the works from which the infor­ma­tion is garnered.

People often think of pla­gia­rism in terms of copying small or large sec­tions of papers; how­ever, pla­gia­rism can also occur in the­atrical, video and other visual and audi­tory contexts.

Some common, but by no means fool­proof, strate­gies for detecting pla­gia­rism include sudden shifts in the quality of writing, pho­tog­raphy or pre­sen­ta­tion within or across projects, par­tic­u­larly if the voice of the author changes dra­mat­i­cally. Projects that include few or no cita­tions also might indi­cate that stu­dents are unaware of the need to cite or may have inten­tion­ally failed to cite. Many fac­ulty now use dig­ital tools such as Tur­nItIn, a ser­vice that reviews papers for copying, or search engines like Google to search for dupli­cated phrases, sen­tences, para­graphs, images, sounds, or other infor­ma­tion. These dig­ital tools still require eval­u­a­tion to deter­mine their accuracy.

Is there any way for uni­ver­si­ties to pre­vent plagiarism?

There are a number of proac­tive strate­gies that may help pre­vent pla­gia­rism. These work best when rein­forced across the cur­riculum. At a basic level, stu­dents need to learn not only what pla­gia­rism is, but also how to iden­tify it in their own and others’ work. Stu­dents need to learn proper cita­tion, so they can use other people’s words, ideas and data appro­pri­ately, and in a manner that enhances their aca­d­emic credibility.

Time and project man­age­ment skills, including strate­gies for gath­ering and orga­nizing ref­er­ences and asso­ci­ated infor­ma­tion, can help stu­dents avoid including others’ work without appro­priate cita­tion, and more impor­tantly avoid the pres­sure of last-​​minute dead­lines that increase the like­li­hood that a stu­dent will pla­gia­rize. Addi­tion­ally, stu­dents can also use Tur­nItIn, which allows them to submit doc­u­ments mul­tiple times to be able to eval­uate their own work prior to sub­mit­ting it to their professor.

Gen­er­ally speaking, what are the reper­cus­sions for a stu­dent who gets caught pla­gia­rizing? If they get away with it, how might their poten­tially under­de­vel­oped research skills later affect them and the work­force at large?

In some cases, pla­gia­rism does result from unde­vel­oped research and writing skills. In other cases, it is a more delib­erate act. Within aca­d­emic con­texts, stu­dents may fail the assign­ment, the course or in some sit­u­a­tions be expelled. In the pro­fes­sional world, rep­re­senting another’s ideas or infor­ma­tion as one’s own under­mines trust within and across an organization’s divi­sions; more sig­nif­i­cantly, it may cost an indi­vidual his or her job. It can also under­mine an individual’s rep­u­ta­tion, and not just in the short term.

In the long term, pla­gia­rism may affect whether or not an indi­vidual gets offered that next job or pro­mo­tion, or even whether the indi­vidual is able to stay in a par­tic­ular career or field. In addi­tion to tar­nishing the integrity of the indi­vidual, pla­gia­rism tar­nishes the cred­i­bility and rep­u­ta­tion of their employer, and in terms of the bottom line, it may result in costly fines or legal battles.