The Plagiarism Problem

Introduction

For the past 4 months, plagiarism has been a hot topic, largely because of allegations leveled at Harvard President Claudine Guy (Harvard Gazette, 2022) suggesting that she plagiarized passages in her thesis and published works (Vincent, 2023). However,  President Guy is not the only high-profile person to be accused of stealing the words of others, the action that defines plagiarism. Both President Joe Biden (Waxman, 2019) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Associated Press, 1991; Carson et al., 1994) have been found guilty of plagiarizing.

In contrast to the consequences for this politician and activist, the damage to the career of a scholar accused of plagiarism can be devastating. However, despite the risks, academics engage in plagiarism, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes cavalierly, but always to the detriment of scholarship.

Plagiarism In Higher Education

Among students

According to the International Center for Academic Integrity (n.d.), citing 2020 data obtained by Rettinger, more than 60% of surveyed undergraduates from 5 different institutions admitted to cheating. These data are consistent with previous reports from the same organization (citing co-founder Robert McCabe) based on a survey of 70,000 students in 1990.

Among researchers

Academic dishonesty is not a practice exclusive to students. In December 2004, 20 years before Claudine Guy resigned from Harvard, Smallwood and Bartlett reported on 4 incidences of plagiarism by faculty members that had been discovered or uncovered and ignored. The authors alluded to a not-so-secret phenomenon in the academy: Plagiarism among researchers is not uncommon.

Excuses For Plagiarism

Publish or perish

The publish-or-perish paradigm in academia may contribute to the increase in pressure among early career researchers and graduate students (Larken, 2019). After years of schooling, often in highly competitive programs, researchers risk losing favorable opportunities in academia when they fail to publish (Rawat & Meena, 2014). 

Moreover, the number of published papers and the prestige of the journals in which they are published are the bases for tenure decisions and research funding. Published research on behavior has indicated that a highly competitive environment leads to high levels of stress (Haven et al., 2019) and may contribute to a propensity for committing acts of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism (Harvey, 2020).

Lack of understanding

Failure to understand the standards of ethical research was cited in a recent summary of plagiarism in academia (Warsy & Warsy, 2019). These findings indicated that the instances of academic dishonesty result from failure to train undergraduates and, in the United States, where language is not a barrier to understanding, high school students. Notably, the International Center for Academic Integrity (n.d.), reported that 58% of U.S. high school students admitted to plagiarism. However, ignorance of academic integrity fails to account for a proportion of students who recognize the policy but cheat anyway (Davis, 2023).

Although the cheating behavior of a general cohort of high students and undergraduates in required courses is not a shocking revelation (Awosoga et al., 2021), graduate students are expected to know and follow academic integrity policies. However, Rosenthal and Morin (2006) citing McCabe et al. (2006) suggested that cheating by graduate students is neither new nor rare.

Cultural differences

The U.S. education system, historically recognized and sometimes criticized for a meritocracy-based rewards system, has been cited as a reason for plagiarism committed by students from non-Western cultures. Soni Adhikari (2018) explained that this explanation is probably oversimplified. Differences in education systems certainly need to be recognized, and international students need to be apprised of key definitions of academic integrity in U.S. institutions. However, the pedagogies associated with Eastern cultures, such as rote memorization, are learning strategies used in Western secondary schools (Ferlazzo, 2021).

Thus, neither cultural nor education system differences provide a full explanation for plagiarism in U.S. postsecondary institutions.

Regardless of the cause, academic dishonesty in general and plagiarism specifically exert profound negative impacts on academia, scholarship, and research.

Negative Effects

Individual distrust and compromised performance

Like all acts of deception, plagiarism reduces trust among people. Students with mentors who cheat or allow cheating may not adhere to professed academic standards, leading to a cycle of academic dishonesty that extends beyond the classroom and impacts society in tangential ways. The world will not collapse because an English paper was purchased from an essay mill, but people may die when dishonest students enter medical training and decide that cheating is just part of practice (Associated Press, 2023).

Diminished opportunities for scholars

Notably, loss of integrity in the publishing sector has contributed to the establishment of predatory publishers (Princeton University Library, 2023). These nefarious actors sabotage the high expectations set for the open access movement. Therefore, as paywalls remain high, potential contributors to global problems remain silenced or marginalized.

Poor outcomes for everyone

Fewer new ideas are presented where plagiarism flourishes. Rehashing the same and often poorly tested ideas stifles innovation. Moreover, unchallenged premises to old arguments lead to failed policies and ineffective governance.

Efforts to enforce integrity

Faculty engagement

As eyes turn to institutions to fix problems with academic integrity, the faculty may shoulder most of the burden for identifying and preventing cheating. In addition to designing curricula to discourage cheating, faculty may be tacitly or mandated to run software programs to detect possible cheating, analyze the results from these programs, discipline the student, and follow-up with stakeholders (Keith, 2018). These are time-consuming tasks for which many faculty members are neither trained nor compensated, and with the inevitable increase in AI-based writing, the burden on faculty members to discern original articles from copied manuscripts may also increase (Nolan, 2023).

Programs for students

Notably, initiatives such as student success centers, mentorships, and study buddy programs have been designed, funded, and established to empower students. Although the key performance indicators of student success vary, from admission numbers and graduation rates to the number of students who are accredited in a specific program (U.S. Department of Education, various dates), they generally do not include assessments of the number of cheating and noncheating students.

Honor codes

In addition, honor codes have been implemented as tools for educating students on academic integrity. Similar to problems with student success assessments, measuring the effectiveness of an honor code is impossible without knowing the objective number of people who cheat. 

Notably, the Harvard honor code (n.d.) states that “plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own… or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.” In at least one case, the code was not enough to stop plagiarism.

Conclusion

Competition for favor has led to dishonest behavior since Cain killed Abel. However, pressure to perform or lack of understanding is not an excuse for academic dishonesty. By understanding the importance of academic integrity and learning how to cite sources accurately, a student, researcher, and college president can avoid the career-derailing consequences of plagiarism.

References

Adhikari, S. (2018). Beyond culture: Helping international students avoid plagiarism. Journal of International Students, 8(1), 375–388. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1166772.pdf.

Associated Press. (1991, October 11). “Boston U. panel finds plagiarism by Dr. King.” The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/11/us/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by-dr-king.html.

Associated Press. (2023, January 27). “25 people in Florida are charged with a scheme to get fake nursing diplomas.” National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2023/01/27/1152034256/fake-nursing-diplomas-scheme-arrests-florida.

Awosoga, O., Nord,C. M. Varsanyi, S., Barley, R., and Meadows, J. (2021). Student and faculty perceptions of, and experiences with, academic dishonesty at a medium-sized Canadian university. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 17(24). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00090-w.

Carson, C., Luker, R., Russell, P. A., & Holloran, P. (Eds.). (1994). The Martin Luther King Jr. Paper project, Volume 2. University of California Press. Retrieved from https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj27721/files/media/file/vol2intro_0.pdf.

Davis, J. E. (2023, September 28). “The real roots of student cheating” [blog]. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-new-discontents/202309/what-to-do-about-student-cheating.

Ferlazzo, L. (2020, July 29). “The roles of memorization in teaching and learning” [blog]. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-the-roles-of-memorization-in-teaching-learning/2020/07.

Harvard College. (n.d.). The Harvard College Honor Code. Retrieved from https://honor.fas.harvard.edu/honor-code.

The Harvard Gazette. (2022, December 15). Harvard names Claudine Gay 30th president — Harvard Gazette. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/12/harvard-names-claudine-gay-30th-president/.

Harvey, L. (2020). Research fraud: a long-term problem exacerbated by the clamour for research grants. Quality in Higher Education, 26(3), 243–261. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13538322.2020.1820126.

Haven, T. L., Bouter, L. M., Smulders, Y. M., & Tijdink, J. K. (2019, June 19). Perceived publication pressure in Amsterdam: Survey of all disciplinary fields and academic ranks. PLOS One. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217931.

International Center for Academic Integrity. (2020). Facts and statistics. Retrieved from https://academicintegrity.org/resources/facts-and-statistics.

Keith, T. (2018, November 15). Literature review: Academic dishonesty –– What causes it, how to prevent it. Academic Technology Solutions, University of Chicago. Retrieved from https://academictech.uchicago.edu/2018/11/16/literature-review-academic-dishonesty-what-causes-it-how-to-prevent-it/.

Larkin, M. (1999). Pressure to publish stifles young talent. Nature, 397, 467. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1038/17191.

McCabe, D. L., Butterfield, K. D., & Treviño, L. K. (2006). Academic dishonesty in graduate business programs: Prevalence, causes, and proposed action. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 5(3). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2006.22697018.

Nolan, B. (2023, January 21). College professors are considering creative ways to stop students from using AI to cheat. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatgpt-college-professors-students-cheating-2023-1.

Princeton University Library. (2023). Understanding predatory publishing. Retrieved from https://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=1101388&p=8031747.

Rawat, S., & Meena, S. (2014, February). Publish or perish: Where are we heading? Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 19(2), 87–89. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999612.

Rosenthal, T., and Morin, R. (2006, September 26). Getting a graduate degree in cheating. The Pew Institute. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/2006/09/26/getting-a-grad-degree-in-cheating/.

Smallwood, S., & Bartlett, T. (2004, December). Four academic plagiarists that you’ve never heard of: How many more are out there? The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/four-academic-plagiarists-youve-never-heard-of-how-many-more-are-out-there/?sra=true.

U.S. Department of Education. (various dates). College scorecard. Retrieved from https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/.

Vincent, I. (2023, December 22). “Revealed: Harvard cleared Claudine Gay of plagiarism BEFORE investigating her — and its lawyers falsely claimed her work was ‘properly cited.’” The New York Post. Retrieved from https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/revealed-harvard-cleared-claudine-gay-of-plagiarism-before-investigating-her-and-its-lawyers-falsely-claimed-her-work-was-properly-cited/ar-AA1lUZnK.

Warsy, A., & Warsy, I. (2019). Publish ethically or perish. Journal of Nature and Science of Medicine, 2(4), 186–195. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/jnsm/fulltext/2019/02040/publish_ethically_or_perish.2.aspx.

Waxman, O. B. (2019, August 2). “Why Joe Biden’s first campaign for president collapsed after just 3 months.” TIME. Retrieved from https://time.com/5636715/biden-1988-presidential-campaign/.