iThenticate Blog

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that teachers felt that, while technology has made writing easier to teach, it’s also made student writing less formal and, even more worrisome, led to an increase in plagiarism.

How big of a problem is plagiarism and why? This question was the basis of a conversation I had with Ron Keller, the technical editor for the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, a non-animal science journal published by the Federation of Animal Science Societies (FASS). Keller shared his perspective on plagiarism, experiences with different plagiarism instances, and insights into self-citation as well as the pressure to publish. Watch the video below for highlights or read below for the full discussion.

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Judgment on Plagiarism: It’s for Academics to Judge

First off today, Paul Jump at the Times Higher Education reports that, in the UK, the High Court has ruled that, while the courts or the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) do have the ability to overturn rulings on plagiarism, they can only do so in rare cases that do not involve or require academic judgment. The judge was looking at the OIA’s refusal to overturn a plagiarism-related ruling originally by Queen Mary, University of London against a former student Hazim Mustafa. Mustafa was attending the school during the 2007-2008 school year and attempting to obtain a master’s degree in project management. However, Mustafa was forced to drop out due in part to the plagiarism allegations. Mustafa petitioned the OIA and the courts to protest both the plagiarism verdict and other treatment he claims to have received from the University. According to Mustafa, while he did copy heavily in the essay in question, square-brackets were enough to show that he did not intend to plagiarize. The University disagreed saying that it was almost impossible to tell what was original text and what was copied in the essay. Both the OIA and the High Court ruled that they had no standing in the case as the matter required “knowledge of academic conventions” and neither the court nor the OIA were in a position to overturn the ruling. This prompted The High Court to dismiss Mustafa’s appeal but did note that this was not a finding of “moral turpitude” against Mustafa as the school did not investigate whether he had intentionally misled anyone.

A recent article on the CBC website talks about a heated political exchange that's ongoing in St. John's in New Brunswick, Canada as it prepares to vote for its mayor.

In 2013, plagiarism might, reasonably, seem to be an act of self-destruction. In an era where words can trivially be tracked and searched for, committing an act of plagiarism could easily be mistaken for an act of career suicide rather than a means to improve one’s reputation.

Blake Pontchartrain was, until recently, one of the best-known names in New Orleans journalism. A columnist for an alternative weekly paper The Gambit, his Q&A column was one of the more popular attractions in the paper. In it, he would answer questions about New Orleans and its history, including detailed ones that left many in awe at the breadth of his knowledge, or at least his research skills.

It’s been four months since Jonah Lehrer’s disastrous “apology” speech at an event hosted by The Knight Foundation and, though Lehrer hasn’t been in the spotlight much, he apparently has not been sitting idle either.

In both the U.S. and elsewhere, there has been a growing trend of plagiarism disputes in academia spilling over to the courtrooms. Whether it’s a student unhappy about about being expelled or a professor unhappy about being put up for termination, more and more are turning to outside adjudicators and even the court system for relief.