Plagiarism

With modern technology, copying people's work and passing it off as your own is easier than ever--but it is also easier to get caught. Punishments for plagiarism can be severe, yet students are often given little advice. Lynn Eaton investigates

Copying someone else's work is never a good idea, as Prime Minister Tony Blair found out last year when, to everyone's amazement, his government used a previously obscure Californian graduate's doctoral thesis as some of the basis for going to war with Iraq.

In February 2004, Downing Street had to admit, somewhat sheepishly, that it had copied the thesis, written by Ibrahim Al Marashi and colleagues, warts and all, and used it as part of the justification for the war. Journalists knew it had been copied because, although changes had been made, it even included basic spelling and grammatical errors.

CHRIS YOUNG/PA
Plagiarism at its most extreme may result in you having
to apologise to an entire nation or two--unless you just don't do apologies

When the blatant copying was pointed out, a number 10 spokesman confessed that the government should have credited the authors of the articles it used in the document and told Channel 4 News, who broke the story, "We all have lessons to learn from this." (www.channel4.com/news/2003/02/week_1/07_dossier.html)

The incident was not only highly politically embarrassing but cast doubt on the strength of the intelligence on which the United Kingdom and United States government based their decision to go to war.

But is it ever right to copy someone else's work and palm it off as your own, either deliberately, or unintentionally? And if you do copy chunks of an article from someone else, do you have to acknowledge it?

For most medical students when faced with a 9 am essay deadline the next morning it is all too tempting to do a search on Google, find a relevant paper or article, and--thanks to the wonders of modern technology--hit the cut and paste buttons. Hey presto--now it is yours. In fact it is not that easy.

Whether the piece is an academic article, a chapter from a book, or just an article from a magazine, if you copy and reproduce it you are stepping on a minefield, warns Kate Pool, deputy general secretary of the Society of Authors.

Not only are you potentially breaching copyright (which may either be held by the publication, or the actual author) you could be seen to be stealing the original author's work--plagiarism.

"Academics tend to believe in freedom of information, so are often quite happy for people to recycle stuff discovered in different places," says Pool. But not all writers and authors will share that view. The society has guidelines on what is and what is not acceptable (box 1).

The term "plagiarism," commonly used to describe copying of someone else's work without acknowledgement, is not entirely accurate, according to Godwin Busuttil, a barrister who specialises in media law and advises the BMJ: "Plagiarism is not a current legal term. 'Plagiary' in the 16th and 17th centuries was kidnapping or thieving. It is, though, a colloquial synonym for infringing copyright--that is, copying someone else's literary, artistic, or dramatic work without acknowledgement and passing it off as one's own." Godwin Busuttil says that in law there is no hard and fast legal rule about how much you can and cannot copy: "It is a question of degree and whether the copying is acknowledged and done for purpose approved in law. To copy another's copyright work without his or her express permission is to infringe his or her copyright in that work."

Under section 29 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (amended in 2003) there is a defence that the copying amounts to "fair dealing." But it is only "for the purposes of research for a non-commercial purpose" and providing it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement of who authored the work being copied.

Because it only applies for non commercial purposes, this would probably apply when students are writing essays. "But it probably would not when they are preparing articles for submission to the BMJ," said Godwin Busuttil.

Legally, terms like "fair dealing" are as much a minefield as what constitutes a "substantial" amount of text, or as open to interpretation as is the word "plagiarism" itself.

According to Godwin Busuttil, "fair dealing" is a commonsense term: "Citing a relevant passage from someone else's work is okay; putting your name at the top of someone else's work is not. There is obviously a lot of space and scope for uncertainty between these two extremes."

Tony Weetman, dean of the medical school at Sheffield University and chair of the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, agrees there are varying degrees of offence when it comes to plagiarism--but that all are examples of misconduct: "It's a serious matter, which would give rise in extreme cases to referral for review by the student review committee." Disciplinary action, he means in other words.

Tony Weetman gives the hypothetical example, at one end of the spectrum, of a third year doctoral student who has copied vast tracts of someone else's work and presented it as their own research. That level of plagiarism would, if discovered, lose them their PhD and could, on a similar scale at undergraduate level, lead to someone being thrown off the course.

"You get lesser degrees [of plagiarism] where students put in an essay which might have been written by someone else, or they may quote a paper without acknowledging the source. If you copy something and don't acknowledge a source, you are not going to get thrown out. But with a PhD, if that was published in an academic journal, it would lead to a retraction. Each case has to be judged in its own right." Professor Weetman makes no distinction between copying an academic paper and copying, for example, a review, or an opinion piece: "I don't think one type of article is any less damaging than the other. If a student is trying to gain an advantage by plagiarising a piece of work and passing it off as their own, that's as serious as looking over someone's shoulder and copying their answers in an exam."

Tutors are increasingly alert to the risk of plagiarism given the ease of practising it since the wide scale use of the internet, he says.

"I take the view that 99% of medical students are decent, honest, upright people. Supervisors are aware of the potential [for plagiarism] but the university provides guidance about ways to pick it up.

"Sometimes the style of an essay suddenly changes. They start to use phrases that are not correct, or they may have gone to an American website and it may be
a US spelling. There will be telltale signs like that."

All universities, not just medical schools, will have their own guidelines for students on what will happen in the event of plagiarism. Weetman is clear about it--it is cheating. "Students have simply got to learn to acknowledge their source," he says.

Sheffield University has its own guide to what is and what is not considered acceptable in quoting other authors or academics. Tony Weetman believes this guidance is typical of that offered to students by most universities (box 2).

Whether medical students are specifically made aware by their tutors of the risks they run in copying chunks of someone else's work and not attributing them is the next big question.

"I wonder how clear it is made to students that it is not acceptable," said Harvey Marcovitch, vice chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, which monitors medical publication ethics, "Is it made explicit? There is a thin line between what is reasonable quotation and what is plagiarism. It has to do with openness. If it isn't made explicit, it should be."

As a student himself, in the '60s, he says it was pretty commonplace for people to take chunks out of other people's works--what would now be regarded as cutting and pasting. Though then it was far more time consuming. "It wasn't a deliberate attempt to pass it off as your own. It's just nobody thought anything was wrong with it. But they wouldn't acknowledge where it was from. I think it was because they thought they were being asked to write essays to show they had read the literature. It was done in all innocence. But now people should have become more sophisticated and realised that is not what is required."

He recalls one incident of plagiarism brought to the committee, where the author, who was from a different country to the United Kingdom, insisted it was the norm in his country to regurgitate large chunks from other published works without acknowledgement. "When challenged, he said that was the way they always did it," says Harvey Marcovitch.

But for all the confusion, there is one simple rule of thumb which should help most medical students decide whether or not what they are doing is acceptable. It comes from Kate Pool at the Society of Authors: "Imagine how you would feel if you were the other guy. If someone did that to me, would I be pissed off. That's a pretty good guide as to whether you should be doing it or not."

       

           

Responses published this month Articles Responses CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Laxmi Vilas Ghimire (September 03, 2004) Read this response CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Seye Abimbola (September 10, 2004) Read this response CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Awad Al-Beshray (September 11, 2004) Read this response CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Kaushal Raj Pandey (September 15, 2004) Read this response CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Laxmi Vilas Ghimire (September 03, 2004)       medical student, TUTH,Kathmandu vilas_laxmi@iom.edu.np Editor - Since my early school days doctors, scientists and researchers had been my ideal personalities.I always thought all of the people working in these fields would be working honestly and purely for the sake of other people.As soon as I entered the medical school four years back I found many articles on the medical and science journals that this field has been facing a lot of problems about cheating others reseach papers and articles.Then I found that all the scientists and medical personnel are not very honest in their work and in addition to this when I read 'Double Helix' by James Wastson and its critical edition, I found that scientist work mainly for fame and the inventions and discoveries that comes out is just in the bi-product form from the struggle inbetween scientists for fame.This further more imparted negative feeling for scientists which once had been my future dream. In this context I found this article by Lynn Eaton to be very informative for the young people so that we won't be involved in these knowingly or unknowingly. CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Seye Abimbola (September 10, 2004)       Medical student, fifth year, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. vosofa@yahoo.com Being a writer both on the scientific and the literary ends make certain problems with the very idea of plagiarism apparent. First of these is what happens when you find a particular expression in another person's work, a particular phrase, an arrangement of words, or even particular words used to convey an impression the like of which you also want to express and finding the author's word(s) just fit for you. Do you keep referencing words and/or phrases? Or what happens when you need to use an information of expresion you once saw in a book whose copy, title or publisher you cannot even place your hands on, or remember. Should this stop you from quoting your choice material all thesame. What happens when you want to quote a poem with only say five lines. When does your quote become substantial? Another is must you always quote personal discussions? I think such questions as these need to be answered, at least for such writers with an eye for details and expressions as I have. CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Awad Al-Beshray (September 11, 2004)       2nd year medical student, Al-Qasseem medical school AWA733@HOTMAIL.COM I'd like first to thank you for the valuable information about this important issue which any one can get involved in with intention or without intention. Last year, I was shocked by an act of a professor who was heading the biochemistry department in my friend's college. He used to put his in every research done at that department as though he was one of researchers and even the researches he started end up to be carried out by the students and then submitted done to him. I never expected such behavior to be adopted by one of people who are supposed to be ultimate model in honesty and frankniess. CAREERS Plagiarism       Lynn Eaton (September 2004) Kaushal Raj Pandey (September 15, 2004)       MBBS fourth year, TUTH,IOM krpandey702@emailaccount.com I am greatly thankful to Lynn Eaton on making medical students aware about plagiarism and its legal consequences1. Being medical students we must respect intellectual right of everyone. But it is hard to believe truth that so many role models of the society including politicians and scientists are involved in such deed. It is also to be considered that intellectual right should not be misused for intellectual rigidity. By that I mean not providing your work to one who wants to make use of it with proper attribution to you but can't pay for it. A student researching under teacher’s idea is good but teacher taking the credit for student’s research with his or her own idea though may not be plagiarism but is a crime of that nature. I believe Cheating in the exam, writing the paragraph without attribution in examination paper should not be viewed as plagiarism for the exam answer is not counted for intellectual property in future purpose. Certainly cheating in exam is an offence but should it be equated with plagiarism? Do we need to attribute authors in answering questions in exam and otherwise the answer is an example of plagiarism hence, liable for punishment. I want the clarification from author in this matter especially for table 2 s/he has used. Is it author’s decision to use it specifically for plagiarism when it is a general guideline to student or the whole thing is the matter of plagiarism? References: Eaton Lynn. Plagiarism StudentBMJ 2004; 12:309-348(September)