Dr. Gardner, I see that you are frustrated as much as I am. Anyone who teaches academic writing comes across this issue a lot. We must teach our students how to write well. That should always be the primary focus of academic writing. All these plagiarism checkers should NEVER be used as scare tactics or for policing students. They should be used to help students improve their own writing.

I agree entirely that our goal should be to show students how to write well. Recently however, I have come across evidence of students using freely accessible plagiarism checkers to see what the checker detects and then fix it by tweaking the sentences. A popular method at the moment seems to be to use what I call synonym substitution. After the plagiarism checker shows which sentences or phrases are detected as copied, the student randomly substitutes synonyms and keeps re-submitting to the checker until the hit rate diminishes. So, the original copied text might read "The cars are built on a custom-made assembly line designed in Germany" and the students final version might read "The vehicles are made on a special German construction line". With this synonym substitution the original idea is still copied and as its source is not acknowledged is still plagiarism. But the plagiarism checker is less likely to detect it. So, I am concerned that such students are learning to avoid being detected rather than learning to avoid plagiarism.

If these students could spend this time trying to write well, they would be saving themselves a lot of pain in the long run. When I see this with undergraduate students, I kind of understand. But it is scary and discouraging when I find a graduate student doing this.

David -

I can certainly see the distress this can cause from an ethical point-of-view. It is discouraging that so many just do not comprehend the principle. I recall hearing young folks where I worked discussing how to keep their old student SAS software licenses going at home by resetting the clocks in their computers to 'trick' them to 'think' the student licenses (from when they had been students) had not expired, when they had. The ethical problem did not register in their brains at all. They just thought how clever they were to do this. And these were people I generally respected. Very disturbing. And the case you describe is much worse. Instead of cheating some company - and companies likely cheat everyone - they are not giving proper 'credit where credit is due.' Can you imagine how they would dislike having that done to them!

Well, teaching ethics is certainly problematic.

Perhaps it would be helpful for enforcement, though still missing the point of wanting to do the right thing, if more emphasis were put on how many references a paper might have.

Best wishes in your hopes to see better behavior.

Jim

PS - Perhaps you could put this thread under the "Topic" of "Ethics" in ResearchGate, as well as the ones currently listed.

Wouldn't it be nice if it were more fashionable to be able to say that your work was built by "standing on the shoulders of giants?" (Interestingly, it seems Newton's perhaps condescending letter to Hooke was not an original use of this phrase, but I suspect that was understood.)

James, thanks for pointing out the connection with ethics. I have added that to the labels for this question.

David

It could be both; either or; or neither nor. It will depend on the student's level of intelligence, accumulated moral values, emergent needs, peer influence, and school influence.

We can see both cases. Some students avoid copying other's content and some others rewrite the content without changing the idea or concept of the original material. What we need is that we have to make the students understand the needs and importance of being "Original".

Sudev,

I wonder if the bombardment of the media on the younger generation's brain has anything to do with the lack of persistence in hard work and deeper understanding of originality. I don't want to sound too old, but I think that more and more research in psychology is showing a growing number of negative effects of media on the brain. It's like the faster we can do things the better, even if quality is compromised. Excellence seems to be less and less emphasized in replacement for quick fixes. Is it possible that all this is connected to the issue? Really disturbing.

I'm not sure about that effect of media although it sounds plausible. However, I wonder about the impact of constant repetition in modern media (e.g. constantly repeated advertisements and TV shows). Does that encourage students to think everything is in the public domain and therefore publicly owned? I am wondering about this perception, rather than suggesting it is a correct one. I have this thought because I find that often when I talk to students about plagiarism they repeat the common mantra that there is no need to reference common knowledge. However, it is their definition of common knowledge that worries me.

Good observation, Dr. Gardner! This is scary, though! If students are already thinking that everything (or almost everything) is public domain, then we have a very serious problem. And when professors are not consistent in discouraging this type of thinking, then we are preparing some serious doom for the young generation. How many times do you here that we (the research or academic writing professors) are very tough on students? Well, if that "toughness" was consistent with all our colleagues, maybe, just maybe, we could discourage this thinking and encourage more original, scholarly thinking in ours students.