I think this is a good reason not to post ppt slides etc on public spaces. Unfortunately, plagiarism is often the result. People are probably less likely to copy from published text although it also happens!

Mary Jane Curry
Associate Professor, Language Education
Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education & Human Development
PO Box 270425, Dewey Hall 1-160G
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
585.273.5934
FAX 585.473.7598
www.rochester.edu/warner/faculty


-----Original Message-----
From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lotte Rienecker
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 10:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: SV: Do SS learn to plagiarize in our classes?

I found the notion of "work documents" as a different genre  -possibly with different rules - mentioned in John's and Mary Ellen's earlier posts interesting, and also the genre issues raised here about encyclopedias and Amazon summaries. As a textbook writer on academic writing, I and my co-author Peter, have found ourselves plagiarised, and extensively so, by other textbook authors, writing about paper writing in HE, some 8 or 9 times (that is: to our knowledge!) There is no mistaking it, because it is most often whole long boxes with bullet-points (sometimes 20-50 lines) that we have found again in the textbooks of other writers. They will probably have found our slides on the internet, I don't think they would sit text in hand and copy such long passages...My most plagiarised bit (the top ten of own plagiarised bits is interesting to follow for a writer!) is a 25-line bullet-point box on what constitutes a good research question. I have no monopoly on those observations, of course, but the exact phrasing of an observation over 25 lines should be credited to any writer.  The first few times it happened we contacted our publisher, who then contacted a lawyer, and the lawyer would say that to take legal action would require a lot and gain probably nothing, but the academic code of conduct is stricter than the law, and there is a committee that enforces such matters. The wisest thing to do is to contact those authors directly and talk to them about it, you don't want to make enemies of your colleagues, and can you rule out 100% that it could never happen to you, not even small scale, unthinkingly? Now it has happened to us to get plagiarised so many times that we cannot quite make up our minds whether to resign to this fact, or to react. And the right measure of reaction is hard to decide upon. I have mixed feelings about it. 

My point is here that plagiarising has little to do with level of education or sophistication. Our plagiarisers are usually subject teachers who sometimes teach and instruct academic writing, and who publish what is largely their course materials, they are not teachers of academic writing for a living. They will typically be more peripheral, versus central, to our field, sometimes teachers or journalists, so: used to popularising. Now there is the issue of the genre textbook and the general knowledge aspect. 

I believe that the felt threshold for plagiarising "general knowledge" or broad-topic textbook material is rather low. And I think that empirically one would find that the most plagiarised texts would not be Bourdieu or the likes of him, but more low- content- and- language- specificity and low prestige text - don't most students who get caught plagiarising, plagiarise other students' papers?

Lotte


Lotte Rienecker
Writing Centre Director, MSc. Psych.
Academic Writing Centre
University of Copenhagen
Department of Humanities,
Njalsgade 125
DK-2300 S
004535329127/private mobile 004538714824
www.akademiskskrivecenter.hum.ku.dk 




-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] På vegne af John Harbord
Sendt: 10. maj 2010 15:50
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: Re: Do SS learn to plagiarize in our classes?

In addition to the point Linda raises with how to distinguish between encyclopedia-type knowledge and original work, I have had a few cases recently (one today) where students plagiarise from encyclopediae and other such common-knowledge sources. The assumption, it seems is that if it is in an encyclopedia it must be common knowledge so you don't need to mention the source. In addition, some professors see red when students cite Wikipedia. The student solution is to drop the citation. Problem solved! Common knowledge, after all.

Interesting, one of the most common sources for the hardened plagiarist is book reviews on Amazon.com. Your professor asks you to write a paper using at least 5 sources in the literature review? Easy: don't waste time reading and summarising - use the summary from Amazon. It's common knowledge, isn't it? After all, one student argued, Bourdieu has been summarised so many times that it is impossible to summarise Bourdieu anew without inadvertently using the phrases of others.

John

>>> Linda McPhee <[log in to unmask]> 10/5/10 12:11 >>>
> 
> Paula noted,
> 
> "but I would have hoped that academic integrity is globally held in 
> somewhat higher esteem",
> 
> to which Russ responded,
> 
> "This is really culturally bound.    What may be deemed plagiarism in one
> culture, could well be deemed acceptable practice in another."
> 
It's not just national culture, but there's a difference in attitude between academia and, say, public service or banking or other industries. The memo/report/projection/proposal/bid etc. stays the same, but the person sending it (the nominal author) can change. 

Meanwhile, in academia, it's difficult to teach the cut-off between:

Clearly                                                     Encyclopedia-type
the work                                                   general
of a single author                                     knowledge
(cite/quote)............................................(no need to cite/quote) 

and it's difficult for students to find this cut-off, because as they advance in their field, and as the field also progresses, the cut-off point moves. Rather than a set of unrealistic 'hard rules', they need to learn to see this as a judgement call, and to have a strategy that will help them make that judgement.