Plagiarism?

scojones

Hey folks. I've a question relating to plagiarism in a thesis. Two of my mates have been accused of plagiarism in their thesis. What they did was they went to a site, put the information on that site into the thesis and referenced the site they got the information from to indicate that the work was not their own. As far as I was aware, this was perfectly ok. By referencing you are not claiming that what you have just said is your own work, but it's the work of someone else.

A definition of plagiarism would be:

the act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation.

By adding a reference you are not trying to pass the material off as your own. Do they have a leg to stand on, or are they screwed?

jhegarty

sjones wrote:

Two of my mates have been accused of plagiarism in their thesis.

could the problem not be more down to two of them having the same info than the fact that they quoted a site ?

scojones

jhegarty wrote:

could the problem not be more down to two of them having the same info than the fact that they quoted a site ?

Oh no hehe. They both did two completely different thesises (sp?).

dermot_sheehan

Did they assert the piece in question was their own original work, despite the footnote? e.g. I fell that X happens because of Y, instead of Mr. Bloggs in his seminal piece mr. bloggers thinks x happens because of y.

Lplated

gabhain7 wrote:

Did they assert the piece in question was their own original work, despite the footnote? e.g. I fell that X happens because of Y, instead of Mr. Bloggs in his seminal piece mr. bloggers thinks x happens because of y.

I agree with Gabhain. Its not so much a question of whether they cited the website, but rather the manner in which they presented the material sourced and the manner in which they referenced the source.

gilroyb

Also, referencing is to bring another's idea into one's own argument. If someone does an essay and gets a first, another has little right to expect to get anything more than a zero if they take that whole essay and just put
"As Y says in his article ...(quote entire essay)..." In other words even if its referenced correctly you can't rely on it to be a piece of your work, only to support your own work.

padser

gabhain7 wrote:

Did they assert the piece in question was their own original work, despite the footnote? e.g. I fell that X happens because of Y, instead of Mr. Bloggs in his seminal piece mr. bloggers thinks x happens because of y.

I think thats its a question of quantity as to whether it falls under a fair dealing defence.

Eg I feel that X happens because of Y (footnote referencing MR Bloggs to support this assertion) would be fine imo. Your opion may have come from Mr Bloggs but you have awknowledged this

If you take a paragraph, re phrase it into your own words and reference the original author that is generally fine imo.

If you are quoting directly you need quotation marks.

If you quote too much then it becomes a breech of copyright once again.

However individual third level institutions may of course have more stringent rules on plagarism.

This conversation reminds me of a poster i saw
'Steal from one source, its plagarism, steal from two and its creative genius'

dermot_sheehan

padser wrote:

I think thats its a question of quantity as to whether it falls under a fair dealing defence.

Eg I feel that X happens because of Y (footnote referencing MR Bloggs to support this assertion) would be fine imo. Your opion may have come from Mr Bloggs but you have awknowledged this

If you take a paragraph, re phrase it into your own words and reference the original author that is generally fine imo.

If you are quoting directly you need quotation marks.

If you quote too much then it becomes a breech of copyright once again.

However individual third level institutions may of course have more stringent rules on plagarism.

This conversation reminds me of a poster i saw
'Steal from one source, its plagarism, steal from two and its creative genius'

I think it would fall under fair dealing, but I don't think its a copyright issue, just a breach of academic rules on plagiarism. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself, while plagarism is claiming someone else's ideas as your own. So although it might not be copyright infringement, IMO it could still be plagarism.

We're really in no position to judge if it was plagarism or not since we haven't seen the work in question. I was just mentioning that if you claim the work as your own, despite the footnote, the institution might reasonably think you're plagarising someone else's work.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

think you are allowed copy 20% of a person's work for academic purposes - i.e. if you photocopy more than 20% of a book then you are breaking copyright, but if you copy less then you are fine, unless it is for commercial purposes.