Dear Professor Mitra,

I wish only to address the point raised by Professor Eyerer, regarding the German law regarding the legal citation of sources.

I understand plagiarism to be the intentional or knowing representation of an author's language, ideas, or writing as another's original work.  It can be seen as analogous to theft, as has been suggested by some others who have responded to this question. But, the German law, which requires more than authentic citation, and additionally requires that the author being cited must agree to the citation, presents a harm to intellectual progress.

Quite often, work is correctly cited [i.e. properly attributed to its author(s)] to represent a particular thesis or argument which the citing author disagrees with or happens to find to be deeply flawed.  In such a case, the German law in question would allow the author being critiqued to protect her/his position from criticism by providing that author to be cited to disallow the citation.

This law invites two harms to intellectual progress and the pursuit of truth.  This claim is based on John Stuart Mills' brilliant defense of the freedom of thought and discussion in his well-known essay "On Liberty". First, by permitting an author to protect original work from criticism, open discussion is stifled and the necessary exchange of ideas and opinions is impeded.  Ultimately the pursuit of truth, which is, according to Mills, always multi-faceted is obstructed.  Second, an author who fails to permit his/her work to be the subject of examination and criticism, misses the important opportunity to defend that position.  Without a constant forum by which to defend one's work and considered opinions, lively truth becomes moribund dogma.

Plagiarism is always a misappropriation. Plagiarism showing the originating source (ie reference) is called copy or citation

in Germany we have avery strong legal rule: If you citate somebody you have to ask him/her if he agree. It is not sufficant to Show the autentic reference. This ist true for text and Pictures and tables.

Peter

Plagiarism can never be tolerated in any form or manner, and plagiarists should be exposed, named and shamed if found guilty. It is an offence and harmful to society, as Barbara mentioned above.

Plagiarizing another scholar's work is wrong.  Why should we get any credit for being so lazy to paraphrase, to re phrase?  Even if the name of the original writer is mentioned, it is still wrong.  And it casts a shadow of doubt over our activities as researchers, because if we 'steal words', what else can we not steal?  Can we stop at just stealing words, and consider research findings as sacred?  Let's be honest and earn the right to be called ethical scholars.  Thanks.

Plagiarism is academic fraud, regardless the references used, authentic or not. What is the contribution of such author - plagiarist?

Yes dear Ljubomir, I believe this is why even on RG we should not plagiarize other work.  We have to be studious, careful to make use of "  ".  And sometimes I do not upvote answers that are just quotes without things that are original from the RG member.  All of us can do right, and can do better.  Should we plagiarize just to increase upvotes?  This should not be so.  And we should have some concern to make RG a just scientific platform, otherwise it's just like FB.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_plagiarism_a_key_to_receive_upvotes_in_RG_answers?_tpcectx=profile_questions

Dear Professor Mitra,

I wish only to address the point raised by Professor Eyerer, regarding the German law regarding the legal citation of sources.

I understand plagiarism to be the intentional or knowing representation of an author's language, ideas, or writing as another's original work.  It can be seen as analogous to theft, as has been suggested by some others who have responded to this question. But, the German law, which requires more than authentic citation, and additionally requires that the author being cited must agree to the citation, presents a harm to intellectual progress.

Quite often, work is correctly cited [i.e. properly attributed to its author(s)] to represent a particular thesis or argument which the citing author disagrees with or happens to find to be deeply flawed.  In such a case, the German law in question would allow the author being critiqued to protect her/his position from criticism by providing that author to be cited to disallow the citation.

This law invites two harms to intellectual progress and the pursuit of truth.  This claim is based on John Stuart Mills' brilliant defense of the freedom of thought and discussion in his well-known essay "On Liberty". First, by permitting an author to protect original work from criticism, open discussion is stifled and the necessary exchange of ideas and opinions is impeded.  Ultimately the pursuit of truth, which is, according to Mills, always multi-faceted is obstructed.  Second, an author who fails to permit his/her work to be the subject of examination and criticism, misses the important opportunity to defend that position.  Without a constant forum by which to defend one's work and considered opinions, lively truth becomes moribund dogma.

We should paraphrase instead of plagiarize as paraphrasing provides the following benefits:

thank you David for widening the look to the German law! Very impotant contribution.

Peter

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all,

According to Webster, "plagiarism" means:

the act of using another person's words or ideas without giving credit to that person: the act of plagiarizing something.

In view of the definition, it appears that this question is poorly formulated:

What harm is there if plagiarism is done with authentic reference?

It would seem that if "authentic reference" is provided to the work of others, then there is no plagiarism involved. Right?

The idea that one must have permission from an author to quote or reference their work is the key element of every gild system of insiders wanting to monopolize a give topic or subject-matter.

H.G. Callaway

Deal all and dear. H.G., I totally agree with you and I would like to add to your reflection that it is good to know and to have a reference to the source because it establishes the context wherein an expression or an idea was originally uttered. When quoting, context is the first element quoters use to establish their distance from the quoted. The issue is not "to quote or not to quote" but what the quote means in its original context and once it is recontextualized. The distance between the first and the second contexts is very important because it can really endow the words with a whole new meaning. Bertolt Brecht uses this de+re-contextualization process in his plays as one of the techniques to produce the famous V-Effekt, or "defamiliarization": something that seems nice and harmless in one scene becomes a crime or some other terrible thing when repeated in a later scene The audience understands the stupidity of falsehood on the first utterance because it was later decontextualized and its real meaning suddenly became clear. 

Best regards, Lilliana

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Ramos-Collado,

Very nice points concerning the power of "contextualization," "de-contetxtualization" and "re-contextualization." All of this requires quotation and interpretation, whether welcomed or unwelcomed. Waiting on permission to quote may suggest wanting to join some pre-existing consensus. But we sometimes need to help establish an alternative direction of thought.   

H.G.Callaway