<p>Hugcheck–that’s how I approached it for years. That’s how lots of teachers approached it for years. Then what we’d discover is that some students were getting the same chance to rewrite in everyone’s class, and continuing to cut and paste in the expectation that sometimes it wouldn’t be caught, and when it was, they could do it over.</p>
<p>Here’s what the school i work at does now–mandatory reporting of the instance to the dean’s office. Student is sent in to get read the riot act. Usually the work is failed, and the student is sent to the info literacy people for a lesson in proper citation. The student is informed that the violation will be kept inhouse and not reported anywhere if it never happens again. BAsically, it will go away. Repeat violations can result in much different results, including (though rare) expulsion.</p>
<p>Thus, the studen gets the chance to say “I didn’t know” but will know there will be serious consequences to continue the not knowing.</p>
<p>This procedure makes it more reasonable for caring instructors to report students. If serious consequences occur, they will be unquestionably the responsibility of the student.</p>
<p>It’s funny, I actually hated the research part of papers in college. What I found to be much easier was to come up with my own analysis and opinions on a text or historic event. To me, having to review what others said or wrote about it was the hard, boring part. So I feel like I was lazy in the sources aspect of my papers because I included more of my own thoughts.</p>
<p>WW–I felt the same way. I loved analyzing a book or poem, and I had to really force myself to incorporate the ideas of others–as a grad student, of course that became very important; I had to master the scholarship that came before me in my discipline–but direct analysis was always my favorite part.</p>
<p>Similarly, in philosophy, which I took a few courses in, my preference was to write my papers as responses, critiques, questionings, of a specific idea of a philosopher, rather than synthesize a bunch of ideas on a subject.</p>
<p>It’s clear to me why the Princeton example is an academic integrity violation. The student was expected to analyze, but instead merely copied someone else’s analysis. Even if the student had cited the original author, s/he still presented no original analysis. And I certainly disagree with Hugcheck about the original versus the copy: in my view, the original is far better written: clear, lively, detailed.</p>
<p>My younger son has been taking an intro philosophy course and I’ve been fascinated to see how different the structure of those papers is expected to be. No footnotes required at all.</p>
<p>The case of Doris Kearns Goodwin would seem to indicate that there is considerable hypocrisy in how plagiarism is treated by the academy and publishing world.</p>
<p>SV2–re: that kind of example. I don’t speak for the “academic world.” I only know who Kearns is through this issue–as far as I know, she writes popular history and I don’t know how the academic world views her. I don’t think the academic world speaks with one voice. I know that for people I respect, plagiarism is plagiarism, regardless of how well known the author is.</p>
<p>Plagiarism is another area where the few are ruining it for the many. Most kids don’t cheat. Even those who plagiarize do so sometimes by accident–especially with paraphrasing or summarizing ideas and not citing. However, the few devoted cheaters out there make it tough for all of us. Professors are less likely to give chances or believe that something was not intentional. </p>
<p>Additionally, with on-line databases, books, and Web sites, it is just so easy to cut and paste. The more software that is developed to catch the cheaters, the craftier they get. Our community college has gone to 40 percent in-class writing to make it difficult for someone who is getting outside help of any kind to pass. A particularly difficult type of plagiarism to catch is when someone turns in something that a boyfriend/girlfriend/peer wrote. It’s a big dilemma.</p>
<p>Sax points out that he used to submit papers with minor reworks in multiple classes. I think lots of kids did that back in the boomer college years with no thought that it would be unethical. If you are learning similar things in a couple of classes, it just made sense to use similar info. I recall being suprised to hear that this was considered unethical - I think this was the first salvo in the general plagiarism tightening. The concept of self plagiarism sounds Montypythonesque to me (Poetgirl - please write us a scene!)</p>
<p>So if paraphrasing with citation is plagiarism, and there is self plagiarism, then the logical conclusion, I suppose, is that each human on the planet is only allowed to write one document per concept. If you dare to write more than one, then even with citation you will be self plagiarizing. Ok but you’ll be ok if you alter your structure. Oy.</p>
<p>I believe the whole plagiarism for multiple papers on a single topic lies in a thread some time ago related to one school. There are probably other schools with similar policies but I doubt it is a generally held opinion.</p>
<p>That is for comp 101 not all classes–sorry I left out that detail. They can write and re-write on the other 60 percent. But you are right: it is sad.</p>
<p>It seems to be generally held. I Googled “plagiarism multiple” and many many college’s plagiarism policies came up. The normal advice is to get permission in advance from both professors-- and the professors are not required to give such permission.</p>
<p>This thread made me think of a paper I wrote for a literature class in college. Apparently, my analysis of the work was suspect in the teacher’s eyes because none of the critics had ever come up with anything like it. The prof. didn’t approve of my thesis–she basically told me that as an undergrad, I shouldn’t have had the audacity to propose my own original theory. But since I had supported my idea well, she wouldn’t ding my grade too much.</p>
<p>I am quite sure I have plagiarized in the style of the Princeton example, and never knew I was doing anything wrong. I am worried now about whether my college student fully understands what plagiarism is, because I know she wasn’t taught about it in depth in high school.</p>
<p>Cite everything that is not your original thought. Students should learns how to cite and then cite often. It is that simple. The name of the game is to cite everything, not to cite as little as possible.</p>
<p>IMO, self-plagiarism is to actual plagiarism as Jerusalem artichokes are to regular old artichokes. That is to say, not related. Maybe it’s cheating (unless, of course, the prof says it’s okay) to recycle a paper and maybe it’s lazy, but you can’t steal ideas from yourself. The guardians of writerly morality need to come up with a better word for this practice. (Repurposing, maybe; that’s what we call it when we recycle our own words and the words of our colleagues in my marketing department. But we’re corporate hacks.) I remember writing at least two, maybe more, papers about George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan when I was an undergrad, for an English class, a philosophy class and maybe a history class. I can’t recall if I asked the profs if it was okay. For sure I modified my arguments and approach to suit the class in question and evolved my ideas on each go-round. I was a hard-working student who wasn’t trying to pull anything over anyone; it was more my way of finding themes that cut across different disciplines. Now, this was at a time when such things, even if they might not have been encouraged, would certainly not have ended in suspension. </p>
<p>As for my child: She marches to the beat of her own drummer and doesn’t think anyone else’s ideas are worth stealing! That may prevent her from running afoul of the plagiarism police.</p>
<p>As a researcher who writes a lot of manuscripts, self-plagiarism rules, in practice, can really drive me up the wall. Like most academics, I’m involved in a lot of studies and manuscripts in the same general area–clearly different papers and different contributions to the literature (e.g., a systematic review of prevalence of abuse in [subgroup], a systematic review of EBTs for a certain population, the results of an randomized controlled trial of an intervention, detailing a community-based intervention development process for a different intervention), but they share a lot of the same background information–and there’s really a finite number of ways I can write, for example, that “[Subgroup] experiences elevated rates of abuse when compared to the general population” or state the common definitions of <a href=“both%20with%20references%20cited%20for%20relevant%20studies,%20of%20course”>phenomenon</a>. I get and respect the theoretical/philosophical/ethical/academic reasons behind the self-plagiarism restrictions, but the degree to which it’s taken nowadays kind of misses the point, IMO. Republishing 90% (or 60% or 70% or 40%) of an article in another journal? Wrong, obviously. But stating a consistent fact? Really, there’s a limit to the number of ways I (or anyone) can write the same factual information and still have it be clear and mean the same thing. But if that’s what the academy wants, I have no choice but to play by those guidelines, even if it makes me pull my hair out at times.</p>