Choosing Our Words Carefully: Plagiarism in the Internet Age
Authors: George B. Bartley, Daniel M. Albert, Thomas J. Liesegang
Journal: Ophthalmology (2014)

“Omit needless words.” Rule 17 from Strunk and White's classic handbook The Elements of Style has served writers and readers well for decades. Choosing the most appropriate words, no more and no less, makes writing “vigorous.”1Strunk W. White E.B. The Elements of Style.3rd ed. Macmillan, New York1979: 23Google Scholar This editorial's theme might be summarized by a spin-off admonition: omit heedless words. Specifically, we wish to highlight the problem of plagiarism for our readers and to advise authors to heed contemporary expectations for their published work. Plagiarism, according to Hexham, is, “the deliberate attempt to deceive the reader through the appropriation and representation as one's own, the work and word of others.”2Hexham I. The Plague of Plagiarism: Academic Plagiarism Defined. Available at: http://c.web.umkc.edu/cowande/plague.htm. Accessed September 16, 2013.Google Scholar When discovered, it can lead to adverse consequences for the author and damage to a journal's reputation, whose influence and usefulness depend on trust: “the trust of readers, authors, researchers, editors, patients, research subjects, funding agencies and administrators of public health policy.”3Ethics Committee of the World Association of Medical Editors World Association of Medical Editors recommendations on publication ethics policies for medical journals.Arch Med Res. 2004; 35: 361Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Google Scholar In this electronic age, the precise definition, limits, and significance of plagiarism have been in the spotlight. We believe that plagiarism is serious professional misconduct. To understand the contrasting and changing attitudes about plagiarism, a review of its history is helpful. Society's stance toward plagiarism reflects its views and values of individuality, originality, and intellectual property. For most of the 5000 years written language has been in use, plagiarism as a concept has not existed. In the “golden age” of Greece, repetition without attribution—what we would now consider plagiarism—was encouraged and valued. The views of Hippocrates and Galen were repeated or paraphrased unchallenged for 15 centuries, as were the teachings of Aristotle.4Osler W. The Evolution of Modern Medicine. Page 69. Project Gutenberg. Available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1566/1566-h/1566-h.htm. Accessed September 16, 2013.Google Scholar When a rival poet stole his verses in the first century CE, the Roman poet Martial labeled the culprit plagiarius; the Latin word for “kidnapper” was the only recourse open to him, because literary theft at the time was an acceptable practice.5Lynch J. The Perfectly Acceptable Practice of Literary Theft: Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Eighteenth Century.Writing-World.Com. 2006; (Available at:) (Accessed September 16, 2013)http://www.writing-world.com/rights/lynch.shtmlGoogle Scholar During the Middle Ages and into the early Renaissance, diverging from the accepted teachings of church and state and publishing original ideas was a hazardous business. Consider the case of Michael Servetus, the physician and theologian who, in 1553, published his discovery of pulmonary circulation in his book Christianismi Restitutio. Copies of the book were burned, as was Servetus himself in the same year. But the concepts of intellectual property—owning one's ideas—and objection to literary theft were beginning to emerge, and by 1601, Martial's plagiarius had entered the English language as plagiary—a literary thief.5Lynch J. The Perfectly Acceptable Practice of Literary Theft: Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Eighteenth Century.Writing-World.Com. 2006; (Available at:) (Accessed September 16, 2013)http://www.writing-world.com/rights/lynch.shtmlGoogle Scholar By 1675, the scientific world was focused on the spectacle of Newton and Leibniz engaged in an acrimonious feud over priority for the invention of calculus. Originality and respect for intellectual property had become important in the world of science,6Merton R. On the Shoulders of Giants. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL1993: 29-32Google Scholar and by 1755, Samuel Johnson had included plagiarism in his Dictionary of the English Language. Like many editors and publishers of that time, Johnson scorned copying and imitation, as evidenced by this famous quote attributed to him: “Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”7“Apocrypha.” The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page. Available at: http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html. Accessed September 16, 2013.Google Scholar Originality and individualism came to the fore in the late 18th century and subsequent decades with the emergence and flourishing of Romanticism, which held sacred the ideal that the author or artist should bring forth an original work through the process of “creation from nothingness.” This view, that plagiarism was objectionable, continued through the 19th and 20th centuries. In some instances, plagiarism overlaps with copyright infringement, unfair competition, or a form of fraud, but it is usually not prosecuted vigorously as a criminal or civil offense.8Green S. Plagiarism, norms, and the limits of theft law: some observations on the use of criminal sanctions in enforcing intellectual property rights.Hastings Law Journal. 2002; 54: 167-202Google Scholar Mark Twain declared that “he regarded the copying of his books for commercial purposes as theft, whereas plagiarism was just ‘bad manners’.”8Green S. Plagiarism, norms, and the limits of theft law: some observations on the use of criminal sanctions in enforcing intellectual property rights.Hastings Law Journal. 2002; 54: 167-202Google Scholar Most writers and editors see it in ethical and moral terms and consider plagiarism a form of cheating.9Clarke R. Plagiarism by Academics: More Complex than it Seems.Journal of the Association for Information Systems. 2006; 7 (8,98,100,101,115)Google Scholar Similar to the irony that it is harder to remain anonymous as the world's population increases, with the arrival of the Internet age, the once widely held view that plagiarism is rare or difficult to detect has been replaced with the realization that it occurs commonly. At Rutgers University, for example, approximately 40% of 14 000 undergraduates admitted to plagiarizing their assignments.10Gabriel T. Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.The New York Times. August 1, 2010; (Available at:) (Accessed September 16, 2013)http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Google Scholar Furthermore, there is growing pushback against the idea that plagiarism constitutes serious cheating. Gabriel in a New York Times article points out, “The Internet may also be defining how students—who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia, and web-linking—understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.”10Gabriel T. Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.The New York Times. August 1, 2010; (Available at:) (Accessed September 16, 2013)http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Google Scholar What is in the public domain and is exempt from requiring citations has always been defined poorly.9Clarke R. Plagiarism by Academics: More Complex than it Seems.Journal of the Association for Information Systems. 2006; 7 (8,98,100,101,115)Google Scholar When we add to this the unlimited information available in cyberspace with no author or other attribution, “it's possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.”10Gabriel T. Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age.The New York Times. August 1, 2010; (Available at:) (Accessed September 16, 2013)http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0Google Scholar The more long-standing complaints against the intellectual rigors of disciplined writing compound the problem: time and effort are required to avoid plagiarism; the citations, ellipses, and brackets employed in defensive writing interfere with readability; avoidance of similarity of expression is difficult and the possibilities for paraphrasing often are limited.9Clarke R. Plagiarism by Academics: More Complex than it Seems.Journal of the Association for Information Systems. 2006; 7 (8,98,100,101,115)Google Scholar As the postmodern era progresses, it seems likely that the Western concepts of the individual and intellectual property will continue to be challenged. A greater concern is that students graduating from colleges, graduate schools, and professional schools will be unprepared for the writing process required to publish in professional journals. Scientific and medical articles require meticulous attention to detail with careful citation and attribution to deal fairly with peers and be trusted by readers. We endorse Hexham's advice: “Academic plagiarism occurs when a writer repeatedly uses more than four [successive] words from a printed source without the use of quotation marks and a precise reference to the original source in a work presented as the author's own research and scholarship. Continuous paraphrasing without serious interaction with another person's views, by way [of] argument or the addition of new material [and] insights, is a form of plagiarism in academic work.”2Hexham I. The Plague of Plagiarism: Academic Plagiarism Defined. Available at: http://c.web.umkc.edu/cowande/plague.htm. Accessed September 16, 2013.Google Scholar Authors should err on the side of providing references—preferably to the original source, rather than a derivative citation. Doing so also should assist researchers conducting meta-analyses, to help ensure that a study does not inadvertently count patients more than once. How about one's own words and ideas? Is reusing them inappropriate? If the work has been published previously, the answer is likely to be yes. Authors typically assign copyright to a publisher when their manuscript is accepted, so it is a violation to cut and paste material from one paper into a subsequent work without proper attribution and permission, even if the original work was one's own. This occurs frequently in the Methods section of manuscripts and less so in the Discussion section, and is easily discoverable by plagiarism detection software. For example, a study of articles submitted to PLOS ONE found that approximately 31% of screened manuscripts contained minor problems, defined as “small instances of self-plagiarism and attributed copying.” Notably, plagiarism screening identified a major problem (defined, in brief, as unattributed reference to the ideas, data, findings of others, or copying more than 100 words verbatim without citation) in 7% of submissions.11Flavall E, Barbour V, Bernstein R, et al. Implementation of plagiarism screening for the PLOS journals. Seventh International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication. Available at: http://www.peerreviewcongress.org/2013/Plenary-Session-Abstracts-9-8.pdf. Accessed November 5, 2013.Google Scholar These definitions were derived from an excellent discussion paper published by the Committee on Publications Ethics.12Wager E. How should editors respond to plagiarism? COPE discussion paper. 2011. Available at: http://publicationethics.org/files/COPE_plagiarism_discussion_%20doc_26%20Apr%2011.pdf. Accessed December 7, 2013.Google Scholar A compendious treatise on ethical writing, including guidelines for the use of previously published material, has been crafted by Miguel Roig; it can be downloaded for free from the Office of Research Integrity.13Roig M. Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices.A guide to ethical writing. 2006; (Available at:) (Accessed December 7, 2013)http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/plagiarism.pdfGoogle Scholar Journals published by Elsevier, including Ophthalmology and the American Journal of Ophthalmology, now screen all new manuscripts when received with originality detection software that compares the submitted work against more than 50 million published articles and books.14Elsevier B.V. Plagiarism detection. Available at: http://www.elsevier.com/editors/perk/plagiarism-detection. Accessed December 7, 2013.Google Scholar Each journal determines its own threshold for unacceptable duplicative text, but manuscripts increasingly are rejected out of hand if intellectual theft—or “intellectual sloth”16Della Sala S. Grafman J. Cubelli R. I copy, therefore I publish.Cortex. 2013; 49: 2281-2282Crossref PubMed Scopus (6) Google Scholar—is evident. As Shafer has asserted, “No longer can a prominent investigator deny accountability for plagiarism because a junior coauthor copied text without his or her knowledge.”15Shafer S. You will be caught.Anesth Analg. 2011; 112: 491-493Crossref PubMed Scopus (42) Google Scholar We believe that plagiarism should be regarded “as a misdeed, not as a mistake,”16Della Sala S. Grafman J. Cubelli R. I copy, therefore I publish.Cortex. 2013; 49: 2281-2282Crossref PubMed Scopus (6) Google Scholar and encourage authors to craft their work assiduously, including the use of plagiarism detection software (which is available free online). Strengthening the standards against plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, will benefit readers, authors, and the public.