Unintentional plagiarism

[orestes]

Hey guys, wanted some feedback on a couple of things.

I just received a call from the dean at a doctoral program I applied to and was invited for an interview. During the call, he mentioned that the program apparently runs all application materials through turnitin, and it turns out that my writing sample (the literature review and methods of my masters thesis) was flagged for additional review. He told me that he had yet to review the writing sample himself, but asked if there might have been a reason for that. I was completely surprised -- I definitely did not intentionally plagiarize anything. He was generally nonchalant about it, but said he'd let me know if he found any problems and I urged him to look into it.

Now, I definitely looked at several other studies and did go through their literature reviews, taking notes, but every time they noted something interesting from another source, I went to the source and verified the claim and attributed it to the original source.

Question #1: Is it plagiarism if you followed a citation and credited the root paper instead of the first paper you saw it in? (Keep in mind, I did go to the root paper to verify claims and in many (but not all) cases actually offered a slightly different interpretation or highlighted other findings.)

Also, I just ran my paper through WriteCheck (which uses turnitin, but doesn't link you to source documents it matches text from) and it did identify small parts of text that I copied verbatim (unintentionally -- they were simply findings that I had noted in my notes). Those parts were fully cited, but not quoted, and were never more than a sentence long. (For example: I wrote, 'Benedict (2003) found that in Malaysia, not using condoms can double the likelihood of getting STDs' when I should have written, 'Benedict (2003) found that "in Malaysia, not using condoms can double the likelihood of getting STDs"') I think it amounted to a total of 5 sentences in a 4,000-word lit review+methods, with a handful more instances of "fuzzy" paraphrasing (changing a couple of words, but the rest still matches -- again, coming from my notes -- but fully cited). By the rule, I understand this is plagiarism and I do regret the error (it was sloppiness, and not ill intent). That said, I expect this does happen a fair amount. So:

Question #2: Should I be worried that I have committed a serious offense? (And I guess the follow-up becomes, when is 'plagiarism' 'Plagiarism'?)

Question #3: If that school does make a determination that I plagiarized, is it common for them to alert other schools? I mentioned in my application the different schools I applied to.

(Also, the vast majority of the text matches were utter crap -- things like "Limitations and Future Research" came up as a match.)

I'm really scared because I have never had anything like this happen before and I don't know how to react. I cited a large number of sources and tried to be very careful about things, but I can see that I did make a few mistakes. Until I hear back from the dean, I'm terrified that they will determine I intentionally did something wrong. Thankfully, I haven't turned my thesis in for my graduation yet and will definitely be fixing those problems...

Edited January 31, 2011 by orestes

[LJK]

I totally understand why you are freaked out and checking into this, but to give some perspective: you were still invited for an interview. Whoever did look over your writing sample personally did not have an issue with it, even if turnitin had a larger problem with your paper than others. It might just be that your writing style is a bit, well, generic, resulting in the same word choices, etc. that others have used. Generic, if that is your issue, isn't necessarily a bad thing as it can be easier to read. My understanding of turnitin is that it flags anything, cited or not, that should be cited. So rather than the generic hypothesis, perhaps your lit review is more citation heavy than most of the writing samples resulting in more turnitin flagging. As long as you know that you have cited diligently (and we all can unconsciously use the same wording so that isn't that big a deal if the quotes aren't there when they should be) you should be fine. Perhaps show the writecheck analysis to your thesis advisor so that you can be reassured from a professor that you are reading it correctly and that you haven't really done anything wrong.

Also, it is most definitely not plagiarism to go back to the original citation. As long as you are not using the interpretation of the intermediate paper, there is no reason to cite it in relation to the root paper.

I doubt that they will determine that you have plagiarized. If for some reason they decide you have, I think it would depend on the relationships between faculty at the various schools (if they are friends discussing the applicant pool this year it could come up) or if they have some specific policy about it. I doubt that they would actively try to blacklist you.

Again: you have an interview! Breathe!

[orestes]

Again: you have an interview! Breathe!

Thanks, LJK. I'm sure I'm overreacting a bit -- I just can't keep myself from doing it (especially since I do see that I made some mistakes -- hence the question about 'plagiarism' becoming 'Plagiarism').

As schools start to contact me (another school notified me that they have recommended me for acceptance) and the whole PhD thing gets closer to being real, I've become really scared that I won't cut it out at the next level (I'm a hard worker, but I don't know if that's a sufficient substitute for intelligence at the doctoral level). I'm sure that's driving a lot of my anxiety right now...

That said, if anybody else has additional perspectives (favorable and unfavorable to my predicament), please share.

Edited January 31, 2011 by orestes

[fuzzylogician]

Congratulations on your acceptance and your interview!

I understand your anxiety and your worries about grad school, which are completely natural, but I don't think you have anything to worry about. I doubt anyone will decided you plagiarized, since we're talking about not more than a sentence or so that sounds like the original--which you did cite--so it's not like you copy-pasted whole pages without referencing the source. As part of your interview you may be asked some questions about your writing sample, which I am sure you will be able to answer because you did write your paper yourself, and that will be the end of it. In any case, I doubt they will actively blacklist you or cause you trouble with other schools.

[qbtacoma]

It sounds like what you are taking from this experience is a hard look at your writing style. That's exactly the right response. I'm sure the dean was impressed with your work, and he wanted to check to see what your reaction was when he mentioned the plagiarism due to sloppiness. Had you reacted defensively or otherwise than as you did (urging him to critically examine your work further, looking into it yourself), it would have put up red flags for him. Sounds to me like you did everything right, and that in the future you will be more careful, which is great. Don't worry too much - it's a positive learning experience!

[orestes]

Thanks for the positive feedback, guys. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid. I just hope I get a response from the dean soon so I can have one less thing nagging me in the back of my mind.

[newms]

I use Turnitin and if you have a quotation that's not in quotation marks but is otherwise cited, then Turnitin won't identify it as a quote and will mark it for review. It sounds like that is what happened. If so then you don't have anything to worry about as you cited the sources (even if it's not the original source, it's still ok)

[Moor1111]

The Survey asked 231 undergraduate students from two private colleges to identify the paraphrases they thought were not plagiarism and those they did think were plagiarism. 72% of these students correctly identified the two correctly paraphrases versions, but nearly 50% of these students also identified other versions as correctly paraphrased.

All that I'm saying is you have to make sure you didn't plagiarize in the essay manually, - intentionally or unintentionally. I work in the professional paraphrasing service and my friend is a teacher so we decided to combine our strengths and write the article that would feature all related things to the essay rewriting.

Students often plagiarize unintentionally and make a strange pattern of Word-for-Word Plagiarism or A Patchwork Paraphrase in the better cases as practice shows, (my friend is a teacher). If the student doesn’t cite, quote the paraphrasing pieces according to the format of writing (APA, MLA, etc.) that could be considered as plagiarism too. 

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by fuzzylogician
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