Plagarism

LegacyUser

Basically I've gone back to college after 5 years working because I lost my job and figured now was a good time to brush up my skills, I was recruited out of 4th year.

My issue is that I handed in an essay that cut and pasted a small segment of work (10%-15% of the paper roughly) from a paper I orginally did 6 years ago, but was still very relevant to the essay. I referenced myself, send the essay off happily. Now I'm being brought up for academic misconduct, the tutor knows that it was my paper orignally, and I know I shouldn't have cut and pasted but it didn't seem like it would be a problem. Now I'm being told I may fail the module and I am heartbroken over it. I'm now completly paranoid that the other papers I submitted are subconciously similiar as I'm taking some modules I previously took but never finished, with the same tutors, on the same subjects with the same essay topics! I feel sick to my stomach. Anyone have any advice? I know that because it was from my own work they'll look upon me in a slightly better light, but it's still bad

Sleepy

How does one plagarise oneself? Seems pretty daft to me.

Was the original paper co-authored with others or something?

Nevyn

Essays are usuall ment to be orginal work by yourself which has not been submitted before.
You should go talk to the course director.

mood

Maybe you left out footnotes etc that were in the original essay!

Thucydides

From the information you've given that sounds completely unresonable in my opinion. It was your work. I don't even see the strict need to reference it to be honest. Don't let yourself be bossed around and stand up for yourself on this. Find and read the Uni's actually plagerism policy to see if it expressely disallows it, but again it was your own work. If all else fails get in touch with the student's union - if not a solicitor.

In fact, I just got a definition for plagarism and it does include 'plagarising one's own work!

"use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."[

AssaultedPeanut

This to me seems completely preposterous. Plagiarism by definition is taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own!!! You didn't.
You even referenced yourself.
If you hadn't and handed in an assignment 100% the same as a previous one you did, I could understand that they'd argue that you didn't do the recent assignment. But even that wouldn't be plagiarism.

Definitely get on to the students union at the very least.

Good luck

Sarn

Thucydides wrote: »

In fact, I just got a definition for plagarism and it does include 'plagarising one's own work!

"use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."[

You cannot plagiarise your own work. That definition is referring to using someone else's work as your own i.e. plagiarising. Normally if you had published a paper you would reference it in order to support your current paper and allow people to get additonal information if required.

Is it possible that your essay may have done the rounds over the years? As such people may have plagiarised your work over the past few years thus making it look like you had plagiarised.

Does the accusation relate to that specific section? You need to get that clarified.
Are you sure you referenced appropriately in your original work?

CDfm

Plagarism is to strong a word IMHO - the purpose of doing the course is to do X amount of course work and not take shortcuts doing so.

So you have been lazy and as you are not a published academic dont appearnto have covered the areas the lecturer wanted you to.

You have been a bit of a smartarse really and havent done the work asked of you.

Yes discuss it with your course director but do apologise if your behaviour has been in any way arrogant as in "ibid me p2"

Not giving you any marks would be very harsh but getting a passing grade is probably what you deserve.

pwd

You can plagiarise yourself. I'm doing postgrad research for over 2 years, and you need to reference yourself, if you use work that's already been published.
However, you are not plagiarising if you did reference your previous work.
I don't think they are accusing you of plagiarism. If they did use the term, they are clearly incorrect, if they are referring to work you referenced. So you should have a strong defence.
If it's that they wanted you to write the essay from scratch, well it's pretty clear you were not fully aware of that, since you explicitly pointed out the copied part. There's probably a rational person there somewhere you can talk to and get this cleared up either way.
Is your tutor a postgrad?
I've taken labs and tutorials and caught a few people outright copying each other. Personally I just give them zero and warn them not to do it again. Always seemed sufficient. Most people ignore it, or don't check for it. So you seem to be very unlucky to get this response.

edit: I'd advise standing up for yourself about this, not accepting what is being said. The tutor will get in trouble if s/he's seen to be making accusations like that needlessly, and that should occur to them if you don't just accept what they say to you. I think students are more likely to get a better response if they stand up for themselves. Myself, I really dislike it when they try to ingratiate themselves, and even prefer rudeness to that sort of approach.

Phlann

Pretty much every university frowns upon 'self plagiarism', and they all regard it as a punishable offence. Whether the denizens of boards.ie agree with that or not is completely irrelevant.

They won't fail you, but you will have to either re-do the assignment, or repeat the module. Probably the former. As long as you're genuinely contrite you'll be fine. Self-plagiarism is one of those things that pops up from time to time, they're obliged to take it seriously and call you in to discuss it but it's really on the lesser end of the scale, as far as offences go.

The fact that you referenced yourself will stand to you. At least that way they'll know that it was a genuine mistake and that you weren't trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

edit: that's a good point, pwd. Does it even count as plagiarism when it's referenced? I'm assuming his work wasn't actually published though, so maybe there's an issue there.

Thucydides

This could prove usefull

http://www.nuim.ie/calendar/rules/documents/plagiarism.pdf

On a side note, I know of a well known former contestant of the Irish version of 'The Apprentice' who plagairised an essay during university.

If I remember correctly, it was blatantly obvious that it wasn't his/her own work. The lecturer, out of suspicion, apparantly typed the project title in to google and the handed up essay was one of the first search reults. The student was an idiot really.

The consequence? He/she got zero. Pretty tame in my opinion. The whole essay was plagairised after all!

Agent J

I do a fair amount of distance education and there is a line in the disclaimer before i hand anything up.

I basically have to say that i have never handed up any part of this document as an assignment for anything else.

Its not plaguarism but it is usually aganist the rules. Do you mind if i ask which college? Even if you dont answer. Find the terms of submitting assignments and go through it with a fine tooth comb.

Its bad but it shouldnt be fatal because its not actual plaugrism.,

Kicks

Firstly, your being brought in to discuss "academic misconduct" not plagarism - referencing yourself doesn't let you just copy and paste, if you read any researcher who references their own work they write about it in different words, they don't just paste a chunk into their new work.

I don't have a link to exact wording but I've had it mentioned by more than one lecturer before that if doing two reports/essays that are similar enough that you have information that fits into both you MUST write the details differently in each - you cannot hand-up two reports/essays regardless of who wrote them that contain information written identically - you can quote yourself of course but there are college guidlines for how many words you can quote from someone else - perhaps you over did the word count.

As for the subconscious thing, I wouldn't worry about that, the odds that your subconscious is going to be able to write out words exactly as you did years ago is pretty unlikely - it's possible you will write about something similar but just in different words which is 100% fine, it's copy and pasting previous work that colleges frown upon.

A once off offence using your own words I can see them giving you a verbal warning and just making sure you are aware of the policy on it - personally I wouldn't worry too much.

Claire121

I'm surprised so many people think you can't plagiarize yourself. When I started my Masters, they devoted half an hour of the introductory talk to self plagiarism. Yes, it exists. Each essay you submit is supposed to be original work and submitting work you previously handed in for assessment which takes up a considerable part of your new paper, or isn't properly referenced, making it clear that you are recycling your old ideas, leads to this kind of problem. Otherwise, wouldn't anyone who was a bit lazy just recycle the same papers, year after year, choosing similar modules to make sure they had less work to do?

Peggypeg

Sleepy wrote: »

How does one plagarise oneself? Seems pretty daft to me.

Was the original paper co-authored with others or something?

Hey OP,

I can see the logic of the above post but unfortunately using work done for something else is plagerism, even if you are the author of the original work. My college has the same rule, I'm in Griffith, I have friends in DIT, DCU and UCD and the rule applies there too. You are only supposed to hand in new material for the topic you are studying not material you have from previous modules or the same module if you have studied it before. I understand that it seems daft but it's the rule. I'm really surprised you didn't know this, it's plastered all over our intranet for college and we also got a lecture on it (plagerism in general) at the start of each semester. If you were unaware of it you may get some leeway especially as it was your own work that you plagerised. I would ask to speak to the head of your faculty, tell them you were unaware of the rule and that you really didn't know you were doing wrong. Maybe they will allow you to resubmit your essay?

Best of luck sweetie.

Sarn

You need to check the plagiarism policy for your department. I know that the UCD policy does not cover self-plagiarism although certain schools may have expanded certain areas.

Considering that you cited yourself it should not be an issue, although it would be expected that you would use it as a base to build on rather than directly copying and pasting. If we were talking about two published articles it would be a different matter as there would be copyright issues when recycling large chunks.

Moomoo1

Claire121 wrote: »

I'm surprised so many people think you can't plagiarize yourself. When I started my Masters, they devoted half an hour of the introductory talk to self plagiarism. Yes, it exists. Each essay you submit is supposed to be original work and submitting work you previously handed in for assessment which takes up a considerable part of your new paper, or isn't properly referenced, making it clear that you are recycling your old ideas, leads to this kind of problem. Otherwise, wouldn't anyone who was a bit lazy just recycle the same papers, year after year, choosing similar modules to make sure they had less work to do?

but it was referenced, that's the point. All the material he lifted from his old paper was referenced. It can't be plagiarism if it's referenced...

Overheal

Seems absurd to me. Einstein would have been screwed if he had to redraft Relativity every Tuesday.

On the other hand, there are prime examples in programming where code recycling leads to unforseen problems and random glitches. Some of the code in Windows 7 is 15 years old or more. And about 2 weeks ago they discovered a security exploit thats been there since the 90s. Hell, A few months ago someone discovered a serious security loophole thats been in existence since the inception of The Internet.

Take this through the usual channels OP: Course Director, Student Union, Board of Directors, Board of Education, etc. But dont be surprised if the verdict swings one way or the other.

Claire121

Moomoo1 wrote: »

but it was referenced, that's the point. All the material he lifted from his old paper was referenced. It can't be plagiarism if it's referenced...

Perhaps it was badly referenced, perhaps he didn't reference all of it, perhaps it's not actually plagiarism but still against the rules...it's hard to know without seeing it. It's not really normal to copy and paste 15% of your essay into another essay. If you did that with another author's work, you'd probably fail. It's hard to know exactly what the problem is without seeing it but in general, cutting and pasting more than a few lines of anything is a terrible idea. There's really no need for it. If you want to make the same kind of argument again, just rewrite it.

SeaFields

I think arguing whether this was plagiarism or not is not going to solve the problem for the OP.

OP, in my experience as a former tutor in university, I believe your first port of call should be either the year coordinator (which is usually a senior lecturer) or the head of the department.

Make an appointment to see either and explain the situation, in particular mentioning how this as effected your work since the incident. Ask for clarification on the matter (was it wrong and if so you apologise and explain you didn't realise so). If needs be it may be possible to move tutorial groups and get away from that tutor (who, it seems, is being very unreasonable.)

In this situation heads / year coordinators are very diplomatic and well experienced in dealing with these matters. They do not wish to see students under undue pressure as this may reflect badly on the department/course as a whole.

Best of luck with this and the rest of your course

Moomoo1

Claire121 wrote: »

Perhaps it was badly referenced, perhaps he didn't reference all of it, perhaps it's not actually plagiarism but still against the rules...it's hard to know without seeing it. It's not really normal to copy and paste 15% of your essay into another essay. If you did that with another author's work, you'd probably fail. It's hard to know exactly what the problem is without seeing it but in general, cutting and pasting more than a few lines of anything is a terrible idea. There's really no need for it. If you want to make the same kind of argument again, just rewrite it.

that's not necessarily true... sometimes you need to have a large citation in your work, even up to 15-20%. As long as it's referenced, it can't be plagiarism.

OP, could there be more to this? Could someone be trying to settle scores with either you or a professor who happens to be in charge of you? It's not uncommon for professors to fail students of other members of staff they happen to not like...

whatever you do, find the rules and read them. And form your defense based on this.

ohanloj3

Sleepy wrote: »

How does one plagarise oneself? Seems pretty daft to me.

Was the original paper co-authored with others or something?

If you have submitted work and then resubmit it is known as self plagarisation unfortunately, pretty stupid but those are the rules!

CDfm

SeaFields wrote: »

I think arguing whether this was plagiarism or not is not going to solve the problem for the OP.

OP, in my experience as a former tutor in university, I believe your first port of call should be either the year coordinator (which is usually a senior lecturer) or the head of the department.

Make an appointment to see either and explain the situation, in particular mentioning how this as effected your work since the incident. Ask for clarification on the matter (was it wrong and if so you apologise and explain you didn't realise so). If needs be it may be possible to move tutorial groups and get away from that tutor (who, it seems, is being very unreasonable.)

In this situation heads / year coordinators are very diplomatic and well experienced in dealing with these matters. They do not wish to see students under undue pressure as this may reflect badly on the department/course as a whole.

Best of luck with this and the rest of your course

Actually - I like this approach as a person who is coming back again from work after 4 or 5 years will be different to a normal student.

It is very very sensible.