Academic plagiarism and integrity: Is it carelessness or criminal?

Doris A. Christopher, director of the Center for Effective Teaching and Learning, and professor of Information Systems at California State University, Los Angeles, asks what should happen when authors are caught with the words of others.

"Do as I say, not as I do." Those words echo in my ear. Who said them? Did I violate the rules of plagiarizing someone else's work? Where is the gray area here? I remember - the author of these words was none other than my mother. Those famous words still echo in my ears after all these years. So, she must be given credit for the earlier statement. Right? Wrong? Where did she get that expression?

Frequently we hear about another author who just happened to "borrow" the words of another author and claim them as their own. Did Alex Haley take a sentence for his book, Roots, from another author without giving that author credit? Did Martin Luther King, Jr. really "lift" the words for some of his speeches from others as well as plagiarize portions of his doctoral dissertation? Did the author of the remarkably popular Harry Potter series commit plagiarism? Did romance writer Janet Dailey "borrow" portions of her top-selling novels from another author? Was Shakespeare a plagiarist? Did Steven Spielberg make a movie, Amistad, based on the idea of someone else whose work was turned down?

Some would argue, they are just words. M. H. Oermann, in his book, Writing for Publication in Nursing, said plagiarism "is literary theft." In an article in Ethics and Behavior, Michael Roig said that although there is "relatively little empirical research exists documenting the nature and extent of this problem, the literature of scientific misconduct suggests that this phenomenon may be on the increase."

Then there is the argument that errors happen in citing sources. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Pulitzer prizewinning author, states in a February 4, 2002 Time magazine article, "...citation mistakes can happen. I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim, having assumed these, drawn from my notes were my words, not hers (referring to the author Lynne McTaggart's book)." The author underwent a scourging in the press for her "mistake."

According to a January 26, 2002 article in National Journal, Tish Durkin takes Doris Kearns Goodwin to task: ...you produced, nearly verbatim and without acknowledgement, a number of passages from a biography of Kathleen Kennedy by Lynn McTaggart. When Taggart went haywire, you altered future editions. You inserted some 40 footnotes, you emphasized your debt to the McTaggart book on the acknowledgements page, and - shades of Nixon - paid her some money to make the matter go away. You did not, however, change the date at the bottom of the acknowledgments page after changing the text. Nor did you issue a press release or add so much as a 'plagiarism-deleted edition!' banner on the paperback cover.

Should we be more forgiving when authors break the rules? Does the rush to publish and meet deadlines cause authors to become careless? Should they be branded as plagiarizers when such carelessness occurs? Roger Rosenblatt, in a January 21, 2002 Time magazine article, states: "Among Ambrose's defenses are that he used footnotes to indicate his pilfered passages and that he was working too hastily to get the quotation marks in."

What is this gray area? Those pieces of data, facts, phrases, and other materials that we just seem to know - are they someone's intellectual property? What about the portions of a book that stick in one's mind? In an article in Publishers Weekly, Calvin Reid states that this is the premise made by "Melany Nelson whose novel The Persia Café contains a number of passages that appear to be copied from sections of Barbara Kingsolver's best-selling novel The Bean Trees."

As mentioned earlier, the words we use, our style of speaking and writing, our formation of our sentences make us the unique individuals we are. So, when an author such as Stephen Ambrose, historical author of such amazing works as Crazy Horse and Custer and the Nixon trilogy, copies another person's work, we wonder why. And we wonder what to tell our students who agonize over their writing assignments and are chastised when they break the rules of carefully documenting their work.

Is plagiarism taken seriously enough to give someone more than a slap on the hand? In an article in Editor and Publisher, authors Wayne Robins and Eric Whalen would say: The answer is an equivocal YES! Robins and Whalen say to just ask Mike Barnicle whose "alleged plagiarism of another author's work led to his forced resignation after 25 years as the Globe's most popular columnist. According to former Boston Magazine Editor Craig Unger, Barnicle was caught again and again by powers that be within the Globe and outsiders such as Alan Dershowitz, the Boston Phoenix, the Boston Herald, and Boston Magazine."

What advice does one give those who have plagiarized or are contemplating plagiarism? In his article, "When Disaster Strikes" which appeared in the December 1999 American Journalism Review, Don Campbell tells us to "think hard about the ethical choices one makes. What happens to the guilty party - "dismissal? suspension? demotion? reassignment? probation?" Is it worth the cost in terms of credibility, reputation, accountability, professional trust and integrity? Is it worth the cost in terms of now having all work - past, present, and future - subjected to enormous scrutiny and forever tainted by questions of "whose work has been compromised by the author this time?"