No. In fact, certainly in some fields, you will lose some peer respect if you over-cite, for stuff commonly known in the field. I was warned about doing it once by my doctoral supervisor. Anyway, mentioning facts, as such, is not plagiarism, although pretending you have discovered them when somebody else did might be.
I think we do a disservice to our students in k-12 and undergrad when we talk about plagiarism as if it’s all about credit, and not stealing people’s ideas. Those things are true, of course, but that’s really a secondary thing. The main problem with plagiarism is that it destroys the discussion. Academic publications are best seen as slow conversations and debates about a particular subject. Citations put one particular person’s contribution in context with the rest of the conversation. They allow other academics to follow the conversation backwards, to seek different avenues of inquiry, chase things to their end. They reveal the direction of the research and often the philosophy of the researcher. They are vital in a fast moving field, because they reflect which new developments were included, and they are vital in a slow moving field where sources may be generations old and in a variety of languages. Reading an academic paper without seriously perusing the notes is like reading the transcript of a heated debate: a really major element of the communication has been stripped out.
However, the tried and true method of getting students to read and understand real academic citations is the fairly artificial task of preparing a paper with such citations. This is very much like using science labs to teach about experimental procedures. The point is not the product, which is generally awful and useless. The point is learning how this very complicated, very nuances, very artificial communication system works. But kids don’t buy that–and who wants to hear that their work is just canned practice and likely to be terrible?–and so we blather on about the importance of not stealing ideas and giving credit. And that’s not wrong, but it’s no where near the full picture.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say that kids don’t buy that…as this (former) kid was never ever **told **that, and I don’t think I’m unusual in that. I got only the “fairness” and “honesty” spiels, which is why self-plagiarism as an error seems so baffling. Why does it matter if I’m “fair” to myself? Your explanation makes it much more important and obvious.
Poor kids. I think we underestimate them, and that at least some of them (exhibit A being myself) would go, “OH! THAT’S why we cite?! I had no idea, that makes total sense…like if Ashley forwards me a text from Jesse, but he got it from Simone’s tumblr…Simone’s the one who said that, not Ashley or Jesse! It’s totally confusing if I just tell you what Ashley said, I have to be able chase the links back to Simone so you really know what happened!”
I mean, it’s not that hard to see how it’s pretty similar to kids’ own daily drama. Why wouldn’t they buy it, if it was offered for sale?
In all my English classes, the purpose of citations was explicitly because we were terrible. “At this stage, you have no established credibility, we can’t trust what you say. You have to cite people with more authority than you.”
I’m not sure that’s much better, though. It gets into a lot of superficial arguments about what counts as common knowledge, sort of like Derleth mentions. I definitely recall nights I spent in English classes on the Library search engine trying to find a cite for something patently obvious or well established. In a way, though, it is a better argument since it somewhat encapsulates what you said. “This has been said and verified before” is a much stronger force than “you’re stealing ideas.”
This, incidentally, is why I hate Twitter. Its system for following conversations is terrible.
Well, I tell them that. But I am not sure they really, really get it, because the conversation is so vast, it’s hard to grasp. It really is an understanding that has to grow over time. It’s the kind of thing that seems obvious once explained to an adult, but is very difficult for a kid to really take seriously–they can’t grasp the scope of academia. They can’t look past the idea that the product is the point. It’s like explaining a symphony, and why you really need a conductor and sheet music and section leaders, to someone who has only ever played the penny-whistle and sung. But I do start the process, and hope that it will gel later.
That’s not at all what I was saying. It’s not that kids know nothing and need credibility. Everyone–even leaders in their fields–needs to cite so that we have context for what is said. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the violin part of a symphony is, nor how perfectly played, it’s better and more meaningful if you can hear the other intruments.
I know what you were saying. I was expanding on the “writing high school papers with citations is busywork and the result will be terrible and not representative of the actual purpose of citations” thing. Though I do believe the idea of a conversation and the idea of lending credibility are related. People don’t know things in a bubble, and an inability to fall into a conversation or a desire to reinvent the wheel is a serious red flag on the points being presented, even if you’re an authority in the field. Even revolutionary new ideas are grounded in old ones, and one that’s not related to any previous body of work is going to have much less credibility no matter how awesome and credible you’ve been in the past.
But it’s not busywork, anymore than labs in science are busywork. It’s a very useful practice exercise. And yes, the credibility-and-don’t-steal part is real, but secondary.
Also, it’s good to have those long discussions about what needs to be cited and what doesn’t: citing properly is a Big Skill, and one that takes a lot of practice and teaching and reinforcement and debate. It’s too often treated as a minor thing, an easy task, to the detriment of the student. Teachers give a brief lecture that is oriented more towards “Don’t be an evil bad cheater” than anything, and then assume any mistakes are deliberate immorality. This is an area where a skilled instructor can really help a person grow.
Actually, I thought about this some more. Another thing they don’t buy is that they need to practice it, that they need to go through the intermediate steps. You can explain why academics cite, and even if they more or less get it, it sounds easy. It sounds like something you could learn how to do when you finally are doing it “for real”, so you don’t really need to do it now, when it doesn’t matter.
It’s like doing math on the board: you make it look easy and logical and relevant, and the kids see “Oh, I could do that” and the feeling of “I could do that” is so close to the feeling of “I can do that” that they don’t go home and practice because it’s easy. They got it. Practice is a waste of time. And then they sit down to the test and realize they don’t get it at all.
I’m amazed how little information students get regarding academic (dis)honesty. I spend the first class of my graduate level courses discussing it, even using some “ripped from the headlines” examples of people losing jobs, etc. over it. I usually hear someone say, “That’s plagiarism?” at some point.
Mostly self-plagiarism. “I wrote a paper on this topic for another course, so I submitted the same paper for this course.” I actually had a case like this - one of my TAs noticed the paper from when she worked with the student in another course. I called the other prof and within a minute or two, we confirmed it was the exact same paper.
My general attitude is that it is a pattern, versus an isolated incident. I’m sure any number of academic papers have places where I would cite a source differently. But when there is repeated wholesale copying throughout, that’s a pretty open and shut case. In my field of education, there tends to be a lot of specialized information and we tend to communicate with folks in a variety of academic traditions - so references to theory, historical trends, etc. need citations, even something as “commonly known” as the founding of Harvard in 1636.
Any statistical data needs citation; again, something as commonly known as the US teaching workforce being comprised primarily of White women. Anybody working in the field of education could pull up these stats (or sources that confirm this information) very easily.
I once had a student who copied a passage from a text for two pages. Had a citation right after it. He got the part about attribution, but didn’t get the fact that two entire pages lifted from another source is not one’s original work. Some of our students are administrators who communicate in memo format exclusively, and they’re completely clueless when it comes to long-form academic writing.
Don’t. Trite phrases are poor English composition.
Suppose you are tempted to write that “guns don’t kill, people kill.”
Then you could put everything, in my next line, into a Google search box:
“guns don’t kill people kill” quote origin
Results make me think the phrase origin may be lost in antiquity.
Then, if you really, really think you must use this trite phrase in your writing, you could try something like this:
Should you do something like that more than once is a paper? No. Don’t even do it more than once in a college career. Instead, avoid trite phrases.
If you can credit the originator of an idea, do.
(Been pondering this since the first post.)
First, the anecdote. Many years ago I got a free copy of a new textbook. I looked thru the part that covered my research (which all too often was restated wrongly). I noticed their end of chapter remarks on my paper. Hey, that’s the first paragraph of my paper but with necessary changes like “In this paper …” changed to “In that paper …”!
I notified the publisher of my paper (which holds the copyright) and wrote a letter to the publisher of the book. In the next printing it was completely rewritten.
So, one way of defining plagiarism: If the original author sees it and goes “Hey, that’s my writing!”, it’s plagiarism. Ideally.
But …
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Maybe the original author’s memory is poor, wrote a lot, wrote it a very long time ago, doesn’t see the copy, is dead, etc.
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Some people see “their words” in everything and claim plagarism all over the place.
So, the definition would be an idealized form: If the original author only wrote that one thing, remembered it, was still around, etc. and would legitimately recognize his/her work, then that’s plagiarism.
Less ideally, if someone familiar with original, etc., would recognize the source, etc.
Note this is from the point of view of somewhat proving it. From the copying author’s point of view, it’s fairly simple: Did you write it?
Oh, when you’re caught, don’t react like Rand Paul.