Monday, April 29, 2013

Down the Plagiarism Rabbit Hole

 And it gets curiouser and curiouser...

This work is in the public domain in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 80 years or less.
If you think that plagiarism is something only committed by high school students or those new to the college environment, think again.  Consider, for example, these findings by Donald McCabe of Rutgers University who surveyed over 63,700 U.S. undergraduate and 9,250 graduate students between 2002 and 2005:
  • 36% of undergraduates admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from Internet source without footnoting it.”
    • 24% of graduate students self report doing the same
  • 38% admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from written source without footnoting it.”
    • 25% of graduate students self report doing the same
  • 14% of students admit to “fabricating/falsifying a bibliography”
    • 7% of graduate students self report doing the same
  • 7% self report copying materials “almost word for word from a written source without citation.”
    • 4% of graduate students self report doing the same
  • 7% self report “turning in work done by another.”
    • 3% of graduate students self report doing the same
  • 3% report “obtaining paper from term paper mill.”
    • 2% of graduate students report doing so
McCabe's work is also interesting in the fact that his statistics show a substantially lower percentage of the more blatantly obvious forms of plagiarism which are usually associated with the term such as direct copy of large passages of information without citation, using another student's work, or the purchasing or downloading of a whole paper from a paper mill.

Nina Paley [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Okay, it's pop quiz time.

Examine the following list.  What do all of these people have in common?

TS Eliot
Joe Biden, Jr.
Alex Haley
James Cameron
George Harrison
Helen Keller
Michael Jackson
Madonna
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Osama Bin Laden
Michael Bolton
Dan Brown
Dr. Jane Goodall
Stephen Ambrose
Doris Kearns Goodwin
James Frey
Kaavya Viswanathan
Vladimir Putin

Unfortunately, plagiarism is alive and well outside the ivory tower as well as inside it; therefore, if you answered that they are all plagiarists, you're right. They've all used the words or ideas of someone else and passed them off as their own in at least one instance.  Some of them claim to have done it unintentionally, accidentally, or unwittingly. Others have blamed staff members for the error.  In many instances, the incident has lead to court cases, public censure, and even a destruction of the person's credibility. Some, though, have passed seemingly unnoticed into the annals of history. Want to test your knowledge of some of the cases involving those listed above? Try your hand at the plagiarism trivia quiz.

Fun Fact: Plagiarism can alter the course of history. Don't believe me? Well, as the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times in 2003 in which she accuses Saddam Hussein of plagiarism and cites that as a reason for the U.S. to pursue action against Iraq. This reference was picked up in news stories by CNN and other agencies as well as referenced frequently by Rice in the campaign for the invasion. The logic went as follows: Hussein, according to Rice, had plagiarized several passages in reports to the United Nations in its inquest into whether or not Iraq had WMDs. Hussein, again according to Rice, was lying to cover up the fact that WMDs existed. His plagiarism demonstrated to the international community he was untrustworthy. This proved, therefore, that WMDs existed and that action by the U.S. was justified. This wasn't the only reason given for the existence of WMDs, of course. In fact it has since come to light that much of the "evidence" for them was not gathered under the...uhm...strictest research conditions and evidence given to the British people to garner their support for the war in what has become known as the dodgy dossier was exaggerated and, ironically, plagiarized. In a humorous side note to history, a satirical post on the "List of X," a blog hosted by wordpress.com, recently listed the "10 Highlights of George W Bush Presidential Library." Number two on the list is, "An empty room, set aside to display the weapons of mass destruction built by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and which should be found any day now."

By Various (top left bottom right top right bottom left) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Perhaps one of the most famous/infamous cases of plagiarism was carried out by one of the most studied authors in the Western cannon, a Mr. William Shakespeare. Perhaps you've heard of him?  As early as 1593, Shakespeare was being derided as a fraud and a thief by fellow playwright, Robert Greene. But, was the bard really a plagiarist? Stratfordians everywhere must be rolling in their graves at the very thought of such heresy. Thankfully, the University of West Georgia offers a 400-level English Course which focuses on this very question, "Shakespeare the Plagiarist?"

By Durova (Wikimedia Commons) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
It's well known even amongst most undergraduate English majors that Shakespeare "borrowed" several of his plots, some characters, and more than a few descriptions from other works, often classical works and mythology he would have likely been exposed to during his schooling. Others he lifted from fellow, less successful playwrights.  If this is true, and if pretty much everyone knows about it, why hasn't Shakespeare been summarily discredited? Well, first of all, during the Elizabethan period copyright laws as we know and understand them did not exist. Licensing agreements were concerned with making sure seditious materials were not published not with establishing due credit or payment to an author.  The Statute of Anne which introduced the first copyright laws similar to what we now have in the U. S. and which made the British government the regulator and enforcer of copyrights was not in effect until 1710.  Shakespeare's practice of liberally taking material from other authors was common, standard practice of the day.

Secondly, there is the issue that Richard A. Posner addresses in his work, The Little Book of Plagiarism. In it, he contends that, yes, Shakespeare is a plagiarist, but at the same time, we need more plagiarists of Shakespeare's ilk.  While this is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek statement, I would hope, he does describe the kernel of many scholarly defenses against the bard being named a cheater outright. Shakespeare is able to take the works of others and elevate it to a new level of artistry, poetry, and beauty. Simply put, the ends justify the means.

So to recap, the basic defense of Shakespeare not being impugned for being a plagiarist are 1) Everyone else was doing it, and 2) He improved on what he lifted. Perfectly acceptable logic, yes? Well, unless you are a student trying to defend your plagiarized work using either of these lines of logic, that is.  Neither one will buy you any leniency with an instructor or disciplinary board. Why? Simple. You aren't William Shakespeare, at least not yet, and until then, you are expected to do your own work and correctly cite when you have used the work of others.

In The Little Book of Plagiarism, Posner also asserts that our current fanaticism with ferreting out and flogging plagiarists is a relatively new concept which results from the intersection of our cultural mores which celebrate and reward individual accomplishment and economics.  Jonathon Bailey, a journalist who operates the site plagiarismtoday.com, asserts that the problem of plagiarism is compounded by spam blogs and social networking systems which make tracing plagiarists on the internet almost impossible.

Both authors contend that plagiarism, and the prosecution of it, is big business.

“ 'Of course it is,’ said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; ‘there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is–The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.' ”-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (image in public domain, copyright is expired)
Case in point? Wiz Khalifa who according to Rolling Stone Magazine faces a $2.3 M lawsuit brought by Pittsburgh rapper, Maxamillion, for Khalifa's hit song "Black and Yellow."


Examples of high profile cases such as those of Josh Linkner's Twitter account and Viacom vs. YouTube (which alleges copyright infringement) abound on the internet.

Image retrieved from flickr.com. Copyright Eva Rinaldi. Used through Creative Commons agreement.


In one of the odder cases that have recently wound up in court, Linsday Lohan sued Pitbull--not for plagiarism--but for defamation of character for the lyric, "I got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan." Pitbull's lawyers, according to techdirt.com, filed a counter-suit against Stephanie Ovadia, Lohan's lawyer for plagiarism.  It seems that Counselor Ovadia (or someone on her staff) copied and pasted a significant passage of the filings from thinkquest.org, a website which describes itself with the byline "Projects Created by Students for Students." Really, Ms. Ovadia, that's what you learned from Southeastern University School of Law? They must be so proud to have you as an alum. Recently, the judge in the case dismissed Lohan's suit and found Ovadia guilty of plagiarizing the online student work, fining her $750.  She was also fined an additional $750 for lying to the court by trying to blame another lawyer in her office for the plagiarized passages.

Most people can see why someone responsible for a particular work would want credit for their hard work and compensation due.  Seems fair, right? Imagine, though, if you were Colin Purrington who is accused of plagiarizing...wait for it...himself.  Students are often introduced to the idea of self-plagiarism when they've tried unsuccessfully (or unknowingly) to recycle parts of papers (or perhaps whole drafts) they've created for other classes or projects without citing this work as an outside source in the current work in question. This is a confusing and hard to grasp concept, especially for students who are connoisseurs of internet-based publications where articles are often reworked, rehashed, or sometimes simply re-posted with maybe a new headline from one forum to another. (See just about any article on Huffpost, Salon.com, and Alternet as an example.)  These authors aren't punished (except perhaps by more observant readers who call out their laziness in the comments section). Instead, they are recognized publicly and paid for their time and efforts (or lack thereof as the case may be).

The case of Mr. Purrington, however, is more convoluted than this.  You see, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, he's not accused of plagiarizing himself directly. Instead, the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research which is a non-profit group that has awarded $140 M+ in federal and industry research grants since 1993 is suing Mr. Purrington for $150,000 for plagiarizing 1,200 words from their materials they say they developed in 2005.  How did they become aware that Purrington was using this information? Because he contacted them. With an email stating he'd become aware of their use of his 1,200 words without giving him credit for the work.  Purrington has documentation that the guide to designing scientific posters (which is at the center of the lawsuit) was published by him as early as 2001 while he was a biology professor at Swathmore.  Despite this, the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research responded by sending Purrington a cease-and-desist letter and filing a lawsuit against him. Talk about following the white rabbit down the hole!

You can read some of the plagiarized passages and Purrington's requests for settlement on Retraction Watch. You can also view the CPBR document which caught Purrington's attention when it was posted on a site hosted by Purdue University as part of an upcoming poster contest. Purdue has since removed the document from it's hosted site, but you can view it here. You can also read Purrington's series of recent blogs on plagiarism and reducing it in the classroom on his page.



Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Two Sides (and quite possibly more!) to Every Story

Since it is officially Plagiarism Education Week,  an endeavor sponsored if not created by turnitin.com and it's subsidiaries, this week's post tries to do just that--educate our readers on plagiarism, specifically the use of  Plagiarism Detection Services or PDS and the controversy surrounding them.  What, you didn't know there was one? Many people don't.  Their institutions buy these services to help regulate and encourage ethical source use (and as some detractors would add, to justify the ever increasing work loads). Instructors are often left out of these decisions and at many institutions are told that participation is mandatory, both for faculty and students.  While the decision to participate in the DACC PDS (turnitin.com) is left up to the instructor, it is strongly encouraged as a tool to help with the perceived growing epidemic of plagiarism on college campuses. Since it is available and widely used, however, the standard perception is that using a PDS only presents a problem for students who are doing something unethical. Because...why else would our institutions be using them, right?

While many teachers rely on services such as SafeAssign or turnitin.com to help them detect and deter plagiarism as well as to teach students about correct source citation (and do a very good job of it), not everyone is a big fan of using computerized programs to address the issues surrounding plagiarism. Some teachers-and students-insist that PDS violate students' copyright privileges by using their papers to build the databases and to therefore make a profit from student work. Read more about the court case involving turnitin.com here: The Chronicle-turnitin.com case settlement.

Others are concerned about the ways in which these services are used in a haphazard way or incorrectly. Critics assert this sets up a hostile learning environment by implicating all students as potential cheaters and  often leads to students being wrongly accused of plagiarism--an offense that has very damaging consequences at many institutions. Rather than trying to intentionally cheat on an assignment, many students use sloppy citation procedures which many rhetoricians would categorize as patchwriting. For more information on what constitutes patchwriting, you can view Rebecca Moore Howard's discussion of it here: Patchwriting Video from McGraw-Hill. Howard is a professor at Syracuse University, one of the lead researchers in The Citation Project, and the author of several publications dealing with plagiarism. 

This year, The Conference on College Composition and Communication  passed a resolution in which the conference fails to endorse the use of PDS. Although some discussions following the passage of this resolution want to cast this non-endorsement as the 4C's simply saying that PDS have no valid function academia or that those who pushed and voted for the resolution were a vocal minority of cranky pants academics who live a privileged existence few of us do (and believe me, "cranky pants" is quite a tame description for some of the name calling happening in light of this), the nuances of the resolution characterize a situation more complex than either of these treatments suggest. The resolution expresses concerns about how the use of PDS can, and probably often do, adversely affect both the teacher/student relationship as well as the relationship between teachers and their administration.  You can read the full text of Resolution 3 which addresses this issue here: CCCC Resolution on PDS.

You can follow the ensuing debate this resolution generated among the academic community by accessing the article that recently appeared on the Inside Higher Ed webpage and reading it and the comments which follow at: Turning on Turnitin.

Some academics, such as those at Bowling Green State University's English Department, advocate openly resisting PDS sites and the rhetoric they use to generate business.  Look at what they have to say about turnitin.com's efforts at greenwashing and re-branding in their article which compares the history and evolution of turnitin.com to another popular online source used by students, one instructors generally don't want students using--schoolsucks.com. See Turn it Down, Don't Turnitin....

It would be nice to conclude that the concerns raised by those who are skeptical of what a PDS has to offer in terms of teaching students about ethical source use could just be attributed to their Luddite tendencies or something similar.  However, just this morning, a student came in to the Writers Room with a source based paper in hand.  He wanted help going over "grammar and stuff" before submitting his paper to turnitin.com as he was required to do by his instructor.  Although there was material laced throughout the draft that the student would not have had prior knowledge of and is not considered common knowledge, he didn't have anything cited either through the use of in-text citations, a  list of works cited, or even the use of lead in or signal phrases.  When I asked him about why he hadn't cited anything, he said that his instructor told him that's why they were turning their papers in to turnitin.com.  That way they could see what percentage of the paper came up as a match to something else, and as long as it was in the "green" range, he was okay. That meant he hadn't done anything "wrong."

This illustrates one common misconception that several instructors have about turnitn.com. It seems as if some view the colored ratings associated with the originality report in a way similar to the government alert scale that is color coded. Green means all is well. Yellow is a paper we should be wary of. Red means something has absolutely gone ethically awry! Intuitively, this seems to be a correct assumption to make if anyone has had any experience at all with say...the US traffic system, too. Turnitin.com relies on these cultural underpinnings in the marketing of their service.  They didn't just choose colors at random. Yet, if you really investigate how the colors are assigned, you find that they change as a result of the percentage of matched passages increase in a student's work. That is all. However, even a paper that is rated as "red" and has an extraordinarily high percentage of matched work is not necessarily plagiarized as long as all material is cited correctly. (Just as a "green" paper could still contain plagiarized passages.)

Is it a "good" example of  college writing? Hmmm...probably not. Does it demonstrate that the student understands how to use sources (not cite, but use) in the way most teachers would like to see at the college level? Again, probably not. Did the student cheat?  Did he or she take ideas from someone else and try to pass them off as his or her own? Uhmmm...not if they are cited, no. Did the student do the assignment as the teacher intended? Again, no, but that's not plagiarism.  Just because he or she might have copied and pasted whole sections of other papers and strung them together to avoid work, that's still not plagiarism if they are cited. And, as many people who are against the use of a PDS would argue (and as turnitin.com says on it's own site), that's not something a PDS can account for. Whether the student simply knitted together other people's works in order to avoid doing the actual work required, or whether he or she did so because of a lack of understanding of what was wanted, how to do what was wanted, or even both is only going to be determined by interaction between the student and the instructor. And yeah, that's sometimes messy...and uncomfortable...and certainly not the "time saving" mode that turnitin.com purports to sell instructors and institutions alike. As a community college instructor with a five class load, overload classes as well as other professional duties, not to mention a life outside of work (or at least what passes as one for me), I certainly understand the allure of the convenience of using a PDS.  This leads us directly back to the 4C's resolution.

Again, perhaps the student I tutored this morning just misunderstood what his instructor had said. Unfortunately, I've heard versions of that same story (in both of my roles as a teacher and a tutor) from too many students to think that's all there is to the story. And by no means do I intend to single out this one student or his instructor.  My point, rather, is to demonstrate that since this is something I, as well as my colleagues, hear quite often, that the concerns voiced over the use of a PDS are valid. I know that my colleagues who use a PDS are doing so in what is their belief to be the best interests of their students.  Unfortunately, just as many of our students are not well-versed in the ethical use of sources, I'm afraid many instructors aren't well-versed in using a PDS or what it might offer in the way of teaching and preventing plagiarism, not just policing for it. I know that certainly wasn't the case with me when I first started using one. I would imagine the same is true of others as well.

Perhaps our students are not the only ones who can benefit from becoming better educated on plagiarism. After all, even "doing your best" can only raise you to a certain level if you are being asked to work with a partial set of information.  If you use a PDS in your class, make sure you are well-versed in its advantages as well as its limitations.  Review the 4C's resolution. Reflect on whether or not you are following it as well as the Council of Writing Program Administrators policy on best practices to avoid plagiarism in your classroom (http://wpacouncil.org/node/9). Talk to other instructors who use a PDS if you are new to one or considering it. Read what others in your field have to say.  Essentially do what you'd ask your students to do in the same situation. Research. Read. Analyze. Then form an opinion and act upon it.

Further suggested readings:
Winning Hearts and Minds in the War on Plagiarism
Copying to Prevent Copying is Fair
An Ethical Dilemma
Who Owns This Text
It's Not About Fighting Plagiarism-video
Software Catches (and Also Helps) Young Plagiarists
Understanding "Internet plagiarism"

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Happy...Plagiarism Education Week! Yay!

Image used with permission from turnitin.com.
 
      April is a wonderful, bursting-forth-at-the-writing-seams type of month, what with all of the term papers at DACC coming due, Waiting for Rain accepting submissions, the Brosi Poetry Contest at DACC, Maureen Hughes, a DACC student, presenting her book, Sins of the South on April 11 (more info can be found at https://www.facebook.com/DanvilleAreaCommunityCollege?fref=ts ), it being National Poetry Month, and now we have Plagiarism Education Week (April 22-26) to add to the mix.  Between now and April 26, the WR Notebook will post a series dealing with plagiarism and plagiarism education.

     Most people think of plagiarism as a "one size fits all" ethical transgression.  The word is commonly used to refer to stealing another persons words or ideas without giving credit where it is due.  Instructors often assert that plagiarizing "a little" or "unintentionally" doesn't happen. Perhaps that's like being "a little bit pregnant." You either are or you're not.  You're either guilty of violating the academic standards of your college or class or you're not.  Simple, right?  However, a study of almost 900 secondary and higher education instructors and their students' works  conducted last May by plagiarism.org revealed that the problem of plagiarism and whether or not it has occurred isn't quite that cut and dry.  In light of this, they developed the Plagiarism Spectrum and encourage instructors to use it when developing their ethics policies as well as in educating their students. Here are the top ten types of plagiarism violations they found:


Information and graphics used with permission from plagiarism.org.

      How many of these do you see in your students' work?  Which of them do you consider plagiarism? Do some of them carry heavier penalties than others for your students?  You can visit plagiarism.org to download a copy of this chart if you wish to use it (or their other materials) to help educate your students.  All they ask is that you don't alter their materials and that you list to URL on what you distribute.

      During in-service last January, instructors at DACC were presented with research regarding issues surrounding plagiarism and given the opportunity to discuss these issues and various hypothetical situations.  If you are interested in finding out more about plagiarism and your options for handling it in your classroom, you can take advantage of a series of free webcasts presented by turnitin.com, The International Center for Academic Integrity, The School for Ethical Education, and Plagiarism Today.  You can register for these webcasts which discuss the causes of plagiarism, the types of plagiarism, various responses and approaches to dealing with plagiarism as well as originality and creativity on the turnitin.com website at http://turnitin.com/en_us/resources/plagiarism-education-week.