Conceptual Issues In Plagiarism

1. Conceptual Issues In Plagiarism Kevin Silber University of Derby Keynote Address for the Preventing Plagiarism in Psychology Workshop February 2009

2. Overview • What do we mean by plagiarism? • Textual plagiarism • Autoplagiarism • The shape of the plagiarism problem • Is it on the rise? • Is it easier to do? • Is there more pressure on students to do it? • Who does it? • Non-malicious sources of plagiarism • A level success • International students • Ways to tackle the problem • Proving it • The stick or the carrot? • Turnitin

3. What do we mean by plagiarism? “definitional precision constitutes one of the most salient problems in any discussion of acceptable versus unacceptable documentation”(Hawley, 1984, p. 35) • Imagine the following text appears in a book/journal It would appear, therefore, that the capacity of human memory is wholly dependent on the price of potatoes • Which of the following is plagiarised? It would seem, therefore, that the size of human memory is wholly dependent on the cost of potatoes Some have argued that human memory size is determined by the price of potatoes So we can see that the cost of potatoes is the determining factor when it comesto the capacity of human memory • Is it possible to be accused of plagiarising the following? It is estimated that there are about 100 billion neurons in the human brain • Top quote stolen word for word from Larkham and Manns (2002, p. 340)

4. What do we mean by plagiarism? • We could suggest that we have a roughly common view about acceptable and unacceptable practice • It isn’t about single sentences but how much of the total piece is ‘copied’ • An actual figure, you say. Oh no, I wouldn’t put an actual figure on it. You simply get a feel for what is and what is not acceptable. • Maybe it is a combination of intent and extent

5. What do we mean by plagiarism? • Is there a distinction between minor and serious plagiarism? • Minor • Small amounts of cut and paste (Davies, 2000) • One or two verbatim sentences without references (Standler, 2000) • Inventing fictitious references (Bjorklund and Wenestam, 1999) • Serious • Significant amount written by someone else (Standler, 2000) • Where both intent and extent are high (McInnis and Devlin, 2002) • Perhaps it is no wonder that many of our students remain somewhat confused.

6. What do we mean by plagiarism? • Autoplagiarism Do we do this all the time? Conference paper, becomes proceedings, becomes full paper, becomes lecture material, and so on One lecturer wrote on a blog on the subject my embarrassment in having to rewrite something is that I will be unable to surpass my previous effort!(http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/is-auto-plagiarism-acceptable/ - accessed 28/01/09) • Do students not know what autoplagiarism is or do they see us doing it and think it is acceptable?

7. The shape of the plagiarism problem • Is it on the rise? • Depends on whether the source is staff or student self reports • Incidence reports generally vary from 3% (Karlin et al., 1988) to as high as 82% (Stern and Havlicek, 1986) • In a more recent study by Marslen (2003), nearly 80% of undergraduates at two Australian universities confessed to having plagiarised at some time. • Hammond (2002) suggests that the incidence levels of routine cheating have been steadily rising since the 1940s (20-25%) and by the 1990s were at 60-65%.

8. The shape of the plagiarism problem • Is it easier to do? • Copy and paste culture • e-books and e-journals make it easier to plagiarise from authentic sources • ‘Infinite’ internet resources • There is always wikipedia • Can’t do it? Just buy it. • There are an abundance of essay writing service websites • Most claim to help with a model answer and remind students that they must only use this service as help and not as the essay itself. • Is there more pressure on students to do it? • Others plagiarise and are successful (McCabe, Trevino and Butterfield, 2001) • Students work whilst studying so have less time to engage with the demands of the course • Bunching of assignments due to modularisation

9. The shape of the plagiarism problem

10. The shape of the plagiarism problem • Who does it? • A review of the literature suggests: • More common among males • More common in younger students • Mixed accounts of whether it is more common among lower ability students • More common in students with an active student social life • Those lacking confidence or with a Type A personality

11. Non-malicious sources of plagiarism • A level success • A level texts have everything you need (content, summaries of research articles, evaluation and discussion) • The best way to get an A grade at A level is to rote learn and regurgitate a text book • International students • Difficulties with writing academically in a second language • Suggestion that some other cultures reinforce a greater degree of quoting but no evidence that they promote plagiarism

12. Ways to tackle the problem • Proving it • Easy where there is obvious documentary evidence • Less easy where the style is better than that expected by the student but no original text can be found (essays R us) • Turnitin • Will detect anything within its huge database • Can be set up to detect autoplagiarism • Gives a percentage of non-original work and highlights all plagiarised text with reference to the original source

13. Ways to tackle the problem • The stick and the carrot • Stick • A sensible policy must be known to students • Offences must be dealt with quickly and efficiently • Carrot • Turnitin can be used as a learning tool • We need to provide incentives for students not to plagiarise

14. Summary • We know it exists but it is hard to define • It is probably on the rise as even the students who abhor it feel pressured to indulge • It is easier to do but there is also help in detection • Lots goes undetected and/or unpunished • We are hopeful that all is not lost • Now over to you for the solutions

15. References • Bjorklund, M. and Wenestam, C. (1999), Academic cheating; frequncy, methods and causes, Proceedings of the 1999 European Conference on Educational Research, Lahti, Finland (accessed from www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001364.htm on 30/01/09). • Davies, P. (2000), Computerised peer assessment, Education and Training International, 37(4), pp. 346-55. • Hammond, M. (2002), Cyber-plagiarism: are FE students getting away with words? (accessed from www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00002055.htm on 01/02/09). • Hawley, C.S. (1984), The thieves of academe: plagiarism in the university system, Improving College University Teaching, 32, pp. 35-39. • Karlin, M., Michaels, C., Podlogar, S. (1988), An empirical investigation of actual cheating in a large sample of undergraduates, Research in Higher Education, 29(4), pp. 359-64. • Larkham, P.J. and Manns, S. (2002), Plagiarism and its treatment in higher education, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 26(4), pp. 339-49. • McCabe, D.L., Trevino, J.K. and Butterfield, K.D. (2001), Cheating in academic institutions: a decade of research, Ethics and Behaviour, 11(3), pp. 219-32. • McInnis, J.R. and Devlin, M. (2002), Assessing learning in Australian universities (accessed from http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/plagMain.html on 01/02/09). • Standler, R. (2000), Plagiarism in colleges in the USA (accessed from www.rbs2.com/plag.htm, 28/01/09). • Stern, E.B. and Havlicek, L. (1986), Academic misconduct: results of faculty and undergraduate surveys, Journal of Allied Health, 15(2), pp. 129-42.