Plagiarism Risks on Academic Websites

[Patrick Durusau]

Terry,

The concern voiced by your graduate students has also been raised by 
"established" scholars, but it is one that I do not find persuasive in 
deciding to post or "publish" material on the Net. 

First and formost, it has been my personal experience that there are not 
hordes of unethical scholars surfing the Net looking for new insights to 
steal. Plagiarism may actually occur from a professor publishing the 
unattributed insight of a graduate student or from someone lifting an 
idea off of a website. The only complete protection is to tell no one of 
this new insight until it is published in your field's best journal. 
(Watch for the referee who rejects good articles to steal the new ideas.)

Plagiarism is an unfortunate (albeit small) risk of participating in the 
scholarly community. Yes, as one reply to your post stated, one can omit 
information to protect your insight. But will scholarly discussion be 
furthered if we all protect our insights and information? For example, at 
an Egyptology conference I attended several years ago, one presenter 
"flashed" his slides to avoid anyone noted in detail what he observed at 
the original site. Or consider the unfortunate experience with certain 
scroll collections that were available only to a few insiders. Both 
practices avoid the "stealing of insights" but also impair scholarly 
discussion.

Rather than devoting much time or energy to fretting about possible 
plagiarism, I would suggest that your graduate students make names for 
themselves as scholars who have new ideas and insights. Not as scholars 
who have one insight and then spend a career nursing it along. (Remember 
the servant who was given one talent? Matt. 25:14-30)

Patrick

Patrick Durusau
Information Technology
Scholars Press
pdurusau at emory.edu
or
pdurusau at crl.com


> The concern (as I understand it) is that Internet visitors to our web site
> could read original material and lift or adapt original ideas that are not
> yet published in refereed journals.  These ideas could be found in faculty
> working paper abstracts (which students often co-author), or in curriculum
> vitae (as summaries).  Since original research is a key to a successful
> career launch, the concern is that students who are just starting out might
> be "tipping off" others in their field too soon--and broadcasting to the
> Internet at the same time.



> 
> I talked this over with my Director (she's a labor economist), and she
> thinks that students who are not yet on the job market, but soon will be,
> are naturally concerned with preserving their intellectual work as they
> launch their careers.  This is less of a concern for established academics,
> because they become known in their research areas and it's more difficult to
> plagiarize.  We recently loaded a very large digital library of working
> papers that were funded by the US Department of Labor and involved most of
> our faculty, so I suspect that is one reason why the question popped up.
>