I have added my plagiarism case study to my list of publications on my web page, just to give it a bit more prominence. I wrote this 5 years ago now, but I still think I said things reasonably well so I'd still like people to find it. It's in the 2001 section of :
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/pubs.html And you can find direct links here: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/Pubs/plag.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/Pubs/plag.htm I'm in fact pleased to report that this is routinely used here at UMD, and I've heard of a number of other universities that have used it for their students. That pleases me to no end, and I'm also very proud of some of our current and former students for their vigilence in dealing with this issue in a few different circumstances. Those stories can not be told yet, but they are dramatic and in fact inspiring, and perhaps once the dust settles you'll know a bit more of them. Read this, and reread it, and then reread it again. Plagiarism is to research as bribery is to politics, that is it is the act that completely and irrevocably corrupts the process, so we need to always be on our guard. If you see it, you must take action, and you must always avoid it in your own work. My advice is and remains, when you sit down to write a paper or report, close your books, close your notes, and open your mind. Sit down and write, write, write. And then after the fact perhaps check your facts and make sure you got the equations right, etc. But, if you can not sit down and write a paper off the top of your head (and I really mean it, no peeking at books, papers, etc.) then you have no business writing a paper on that topic. You just don't know enough yet to have anything of substance to say. So keep working at it, running experiments, acquiring background, to get to that point where you can actually write the paper off the top of your head. The nice thing about this is that if you write papers this way, you *know* that there is no problem with their authenticity. If you remember copying a few lines from a book, doing a little cutting and pasting from another paper, and then trying to reword things, well, I'm sad to report but you have probably committed plagiarism. Even worse, if you have co-authors you have now made them plagiarists too, and I'll bet they won't be happy. So, let's always be really careful on these issues, and the easist way to avoid this whole mess is to know your material, and write from the top of your head with confidence and even a bit of style. :) BTW, if you have a co-author who you think is guilty of plagiarism, you have a real problem on your hands. You can certainly not allow yourself to be tainted by such actions, so you must at all costs stop the publication of such a paper until that matter is cleared up, and then if you can not do that make sure you are not listed as an author. Once published, you sink or swim together! Always feel free to ask me about this issue, for any reason and under any circumstances. While research is fun and exciting, we also carry a heavy burden to conduct ourselves in an honorable way at all times. There are no shortcuts, and if you take them, you will fall by the wayside. Ted -- Ted Pedersen http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nlpatumd/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
