Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Alternatively, the essence of the original can be concisely summarized, with clear
attribution:
Barlman and Trey (2001) investigated the impact of viruses in large orga-
nizations. They found that organizations are vulnerable if individuals fail to
keep virus definitions up to date, as internal firewalls are rare.
The lesson of this example is that citation by itself is not sufficient. It is necessary
to indicate exactly what material is taken from the reference, and to identify that
material as a quote.
The following is adapted (to protect the guilty) from a real example:
This distribution of costs follows a power law [2] in which only a few tasks
have high impact. The form of the law is [13] for fixed cost
C
given by
P
2
−
α
k
where
describes
user behaviour. Determination of
k
for a specific application can be achieved
through modelling as a Poisson distribution.
(
x
>
C
)
∼
α>
1 and
k
>
1. The parameter
α
In this example, everything but the citations are copied from the reference “[2]”,
including the erroneous misplacement of
k
, which should be a superscript.
Paraphrase of the structure of a paper is also plagiarism. If one paper follows
another to the extent that they use the same headings, have tables of the same layout,
cite much the same background literature, describe the literature with respect to the
same criteria, and have similarly designed experiments with similar data exploring
the same properties, then the second paper is arguably plagiarized.
These kinds of plagiarism can happen when trying to draft a paper (or impress
an advisor). An author might, for example, copy the background of a paper with the
intention of replacing it later on; or an advisor might give a student an existing paper
to use as a model, and the student might then keep some of the text; or any of a range
of such scenarios. Without adequate guidance about plagiarism, it is understandable
that inexperienced scientists make mistakes, especially when other similar mistakes
are in published papers.
It is easy to avoid plagiarism. When writing fresh text, avoid using other text as
a guide, even if you are discussing outcomes reported by someone else. Cite other
text, and be explicit about which material in your work is derived from elsewhere:
mark where the cited material begins and where it ends. Use quotation marks for
borrowed text. Construct reference lists by enumerating the papers you have read,
not by copying the lists in other papers. And design all your own pictures.
For advisors, a lesson is that naïve studentsmay copy, unintentionally or otherwise.
Advisors need to ensure that their students understand what plagiarism is and that
their material is original. All of the authors are responsible if published material turns
out to be plagiarized.
