21-05-2013, 03:59 PM
Pitfalls of Publications: On the Sensitive Issue of Plagiarism
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IEEE defines plagiarism as “the use of
someone else’s prior ideas, processes,
results, or words without explicitly
acknowledging the original author
and source” [1].
At first, this may appear to give a
concise definition of plagiarism and a
clear understanding why it is wrong;
however, in practice, plagiarism is one
of the most complex ethical issues
scientists and engineers face in connection
with publishing and publications.
Despite some obvious cases,
boundaries between referencing, quoting,
adopting, and copying are not so
clear. Some recent scandals (e.g., the
case of the editor-at-large of Time and
CNN host Fareed Zakaria, the resignation
of the German defense minister,
the Hungarian president, or the
Indonesian professor with a degree
from Flinders University) have made
clear that plagiarism is a serious issue.
In fact, due to digital technology
(i.e., easy access and “copy and paste”
ability), plagiarism is becoming an
increasingly large problem for publishers
that requires delicate handling
[2]. Recent conference surveys show
an average of a dozen cases per robotics
conference, and numerous cases
have been initiated against authors for
academic misconduct.
Plagiarism In and Out
In the broadest sense of the definition,
plagiarism is copying someone else’s
work. However, there are many intricate
details involved.
First of all, copying a work can be
done in many ways. The most obvious
is to literally copy (parts of) a manuscript
and submit them as one’s own.
However, in most cases, it is by far not
that obvious. Instead of literally copying
text, words and phrases may be translated
from another language, altered to
reflect the individual’s writing style, or
embedded into the author’s own work.
Furthermore, on a more abstract
level, ideas and concepts may also be
plagiarized. Analogous to patent
infringement, this can include taking
intellectual material and wrongfully
presenting it as one’s own, either an idea
as a whole or in parts, or building forth
on someone else’s work without proper
referencing or licensing.
Understanding (Self-) Plagiarism
To entirely understand the issue of
(self-)plagiarism, possible motivations
should be identified. Researchers
and scientists (in most countries)
are evaluated on the basis of the
number of their publications, which
has evolved into an important metric
for assessing scientific merit. A consequence
of this is publishing more
and more for the sake of quantity,
where quality takes second place.
Sometimes, this results in cases of
blatant copies of the works of others,
with the only aim to obtain highimpact
publications or finishing a
dissertation (e.g., Pal Schmidt, the
Hungarian ex-president, even copied
factual mistakes into his doctoral
thesis). This pressure may lead to
sloppiness, when relevant works are
not always cited properly or altogether
overlooked. Further lays the
practice of incremental publishing,
when results are reported in subsequent
events and periodicals. While
this is not unethical per se, the tendency
to (over-)publish even the
smallest results obviously leads to
large overlaps between incremental
papers, which might fall into the category
of self-plagiarism. Also, since
these incremental works are typically
submitted to lower ranked
journals and conferences where the
peer review procedure is less rigorous,
there is a smaller chance that
they are caught and prevented from
(re-)publication.
Discussion
Within publications of IEEE RAS,
several cases have been discovered, and
at every event a handful of very serious
cases have been encountered. An ethics
committee has been set up within
RAS to facilitate the evaluation of
these cases. The committee makes a
recommendation to the vice-president
for conference activities (a position
currently held by Prof. Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos),
who then presents the
cases to the IEEE headquarters.