Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Trap 2 — The trap of plagiarism
Introduction Part II: Popular traps
Paper structure and purpose

Plagiarism exists when someone else’s words are found in your paper without proper quotes and references. Senior researchers, whose names often appear as the third or fourth author in a paper, do not need to be told. Their reputation is at stake. They know only too well the hefty price one pays when caught. They have heard the tale of the faculty dean high up in the research ladder who had to resign because someone found out that he had plagiarized in a paper written 20 years earlier when he was still a junior researcher.

Vladimir Toldoff told off again

“Vladimir!”

Vladimir’s supervisor Popov points his finger to a sentence in the third paragraph of Vlad’s introduction in the paper published three months earlier in a good journal.

“Yes, anything wrong?”

“The English in this paragraph about Leontiev’s algorithm is too good. These are not your sentences.”

“Um, let me see. Ah, yes, it is rather good, isn’t it! I must have been in great shape that day. I remember noticing how well I had worded that paragraph when I cut and pasted it into my paper from my reading notes.”

“Would it be too much to ask you to bring your reading notes?”

“You have access to them already. I emailed you the files after the review meeting last month.”

“Oh yes. That’s right. Give me a moment… Ah! Here are your notes on Leontiev’s work, and here is that sentence. Now let me retrieve Leontiev’s paper from the electronic library. Just a minute. Here it is. Let me copy a sentence from your paragraph and do a string search on Leontiev’s paper and…well, well, well! What do we have here?! An exact copy of the original!”

“Oh NO!” Vladimir turns red. But he recovers quickly and smiles widely. “It’s fine! Look! I put a reference to Leontiev’s work right at the end of the paragraph. A reference is the same as a quote, isn’t it? After all, Leontiev should be happy. I am increasing his citation count. He will not come and bother me by claiming that these words are his, not mine.”

Popov remains silent. He retrieves from the top of his in-tray basket what looks like an official letter and reads it out loud. “Dear Sir, one of my students brought to my attention that a certain Vladimir Toldoff who works in your research center has not had the courtesy to quote me in his recent paper, but instead claimed my words to be his (see paragraph three of his introduction). I am disappointed that a prestigious Institute like yours does not carefully check its papers before publication. I expect to receive from your Institute and from Mr Toldoff a letter of apology, with a copy forwarded to the editor of the journal. I hope this will be the last time such misconduct occurs.

Signed: Professor Leontiev.”

Plagiarism comes in two flavors: unintentional and intentional.

Vladimir’s story illustrates a case of accidental plagiarism. It is often due to a less than perfect process to collect and annotate background material. Keeping relevant documentation about the information source when capturing information electronically is simply good practice. If you are unsure that a sentence is yours, just cut and paste it into the Google search window to see if it belongs to someone else. Another source of accidental plagiarism comes from writing a paragraph too soon after reading related ideas in someone’s paper. What you read is still undigested, unprocessed, raw; parts of the sentences may still be lingering in memory. There has been no integration, no transformation, and no enrichment. Unintentional plagiarism may also come from sheer ignorance of the concept. I remember reading a paper where one paragraph was so much better written than the others that I asked where it came from. The researcher said that she found the paragraph describing the Java function on a website and it was so well written, so concise, that she could not have written it better herself. She simply assumed that being freely accessible on the web made it legal to copy without quote and attribution.

Intentional plagiarism is stealing for gain. It could be to gain time (no time to write a paraphrase or to retrieve the original paper where the sentence comes from). It could be to gain consideration by enlarging one’s contribution with the uncredited contribution of others. Intentional plagiarism is avoiding to give credit where credit is due. Sir Isaac Newton (a contemporary of Pascal) wrote: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants”. Newton and Pascal recognized that much of what they achieved is due to the people who came before them. Pascal was critical of prideful people who claimed to have accomplished everything on their own.

“Certain authors, speaking of their works, say: ’My book,’ ’My commentary,’ ’My story,’ etc. They are just like middle-class people who have a house of their own on main street and never miss an opportunity to mention it. It would be better for these authors to say: ’Our book,’ ’Our commentary,’ ’Our story,’ etc., given that frequently in these, more belong to other people than to them.” (Pascal, Thoughts)

Plagiarism covers more than plain cut and paste. It includes word substitution. In this case, the plagiarism is definitely intentional. The writer knows the sentence is from someone else. To evade suspicion of plagiarism, the writer changes a word here and there in the plagiarized sentence. Literature has a term for this bad practice: “patchwork plagiarism”.

Intentional plagiarism also includes the complete rewrite of a sequence of ideas. The writer reads the original text (possibly written in a foreign language) and rewrites it sentence by sentence using different words. This is wrong. What the law protects is more than the expression of ideas (copyright), it is also their sequence. If I translated a paragraph from a French book, all words would be different, but I would still be plagiarizing. The ideas expressed in successive sentences would be exactly the same.

Even subtler is plagiarism of oneself (self-plagiarism). You might think that it is unnecessary to quote a sentence or paragraph from one of your earlier publications. But, in all likelihood, you assigned your copyright to the journal, in which case the reproduction rights of your article no longer belong to you. Copying large chunks of your past publications (including visuals) would constitute a breach of copyright unless it is authorized. Good news is, all publishers have someone dealing with permissions. So if you want to reuse a visual or table from another paper, especially if it has been published in a different journal, ask for permission. If you are the author, permission is rarely refused, but the publisher may impose some restrictions such as obligatory mentions, etc.

Copyright may still be yours if you published your paper in an open access peer-reviewed journal. To retain this right, writers pay a publication fee per article published. However, the use of open access entails attribution. Open Access journals such as PLoS adopt the Creative Commons Attribution License. This license¹ allows people to download, reuse, reprint, modify, copy, and distribute, as long as original author and source are mentioned.

Plagiarism has become such a problem that most journals are now using plagiarism-detection software (Turnitin, Copyscape, Ithenticate) to identify scientists who plagiarize. Research institutes or journals which value their reputation often require researchers to check their paper against plagiarism before submission. It is only a matter of time before such checks are conducted retroactively. Woe to the researchers found plagiarizing, even twenty years ago.

Plagiarism is just one of the crimes of unethical writing. For more crimes such as selective reporting, ghost authorship, and questionable citation practices, do read the document² written by Dr. Miguel Roig and sponsored by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). It is entitled: “Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to Ethical Writing”.

Now that you are aware of the dangers of plagiarism, let me encourage you to quote. Quoting is good practice. It demonstrates your intellectual honesty. The list of advantages of quoting does not end here. Quotes are proof that you have read the whole paper, not skimmed its abstract. You are seen as someone authoritative, someone who does not take shortcuts. When you give credit where credit is due, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Quoting scientists who have been published, particularly if they are authoritative, adds credibility to your own work. If you do not share their views, quoting what you object to cannot be disputed. You do not interpret; you quote.

Observe how Professor Feibelman quotes others.

“In apparent support of the half-dissociated overlayer, Pirug, Ritke, and Bonzel’s x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) study of H2O/Ru(0001) “revealed a state at 531.3 eV binding energy which is close to [that] of adsorbed hydroxyl groups” (28).”³

Note how skillfully he quotes from another paper to hint (with the word ’apparent’) that the support is not there at all. Indeed, the next sentence (not shown here) starts with ’However’ to confirm the lack of support.