Plagiarism: an ethical problem in the writing world

AORN Journal,  July, 2004  by Nancy J. Girard

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Stealing is a crime. Although it is easy to identify when someone is stealing money or other tangible items, stealing words, illustrations, tables, figures, thoughts, or ideas can be harder to recognize. This type of stealing is called plagiarism, and it is happening more frequently these days.

Plagiarism can be a very difficult concept to grasp. After all, so many ideas and thoughts have been published already that it seems as though there are no original ideas anymore. What we perceive to be original thoughts really may be opinions and ideas written down by others and subconsciously ingrained in us through things we have read or seen. This is the dilemma of writers. Plagiarism can be intentional, but usually, it is unintentional.

There are many types of plagiarism. The most common are

* submitting someone else's written work as your own,

* copying information verbatim from the Internet,

* using incorrect paraphrasing,

* not documenting references, and

* copying from yourself. (1)

Plagiarism is an increasing problem in the media. For example, Mickey Herskowitz, a prominent sports writer, copied his own previously published words in the Houston Chronicle, and Jayson Blair of The New York Times gained dubious distinction for, in part, overtly stealing material from the San Antonio Express News. (2) Historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin used entire passages from other publications in their books without indicating from whence the material came. (3)

The furor over these actions and the actions of others has not died down. It has prompted publishers to consider ethical behavior among writers, examine more closely what is being submitted, and encourage administrators to listen when there are complaints.

One author has identified several reasons why plagiarism occurs, including

   pressure to publish, lack of time, the
   desire to get work into print quickly,
   simultaneously submitting
   an article to
   multiple journals in
   hopes of increasing the
   odds of acceptance, and
   carelessness. (4)

There are other contributing factors, too, including a lack of knowledge or awareness of the problem and the emergence of the Internet. For example, many authors believe that copying information from the Internet without referencing it is okay. They do not realize that much of this information is copyrighted, and most web sites contain a copyright notice.

Another problem is paraphrasing. Many writers use someone else's work, change a few words from the original document, and then do not reference the original document. They may think that changing the words makes the work their own, but if the original material is not referenced, the words should be the writer's own and result from his or her own thinking on a topic.

PLAGIARISM AND ACADEMIA

The academic world has had to deal with plagiarism for many years. (5) Students today pay a lot of money to attend college or university, so many of them feel that any and all ways they find to excel are acceptable, including plagiarism.

At my school recently, a faculty member grading a required course paper had just seen the same article in a journal she was reading. The student had copied the entire article and submitted it as an original work.

Another example is a student who handed in a paper that was of a much higher caliber than her previous work. The instructor found that the student had purchased the paper on the Internet, which is common today. There are countless web sites where school papers can be purchased. A recent search for "term papers" on Google.com turned up 6,740,000 sites. Papers are available on any topic, at any length, for any purpose, and at any price. Presenting papers purchased on the Internet is plagiarism if these papers are presented as the students' own work. The implication is that these papers represent the students' own words.

To counteract this trend, many colleges, universities, and even high schools are investing in sophisticated plagiarism detection software. These systems work by searching for a series of written words in a given paper on millions of Internet sites. If a word match is round, the address of the site is recorded and forwarded to the software subscriber.

PLAGIARISM AND AORN PUBLICATIONS

The AORN Journal has experienced several instances of plagiarism through the years. One instance involved submission of an article that had just been published in another nursing journal. This was detected inadvertently when I called the editor of the other nursing journal about another matter. Luckily, we had not published out version yet and still could withdraw it.

Another incident involved a manuscript for the Journal that contained large chunks of information that had been taken from a copyrighted web site. In this instance, the problem was caught because the Journal's staff editors carefully review all manuscripts, including checking all references. The reference check found that the article was too similar to material on the web site, and the manuscript was rejected.