Plagiarism

[MakeYourself]

Anyone else worry about plagiarism after writing and submitting a paper even though you know that you double and triple-checked every single citaiton and reference? I have no idea why, but for some reason I always feel certain that I missed something and the plagiarism police are out to get me. I guess all those plagiarism lectures in undergrad had an impact on me. It would make me feel better though if I knew I wasn't the only person who is completely neurotic about this.

[fuzzylogician]

Assuming that you are talking about journal paper, you do your best and you have some people read your manuscript before you submit it. If you missed anything (and sometimes even if you didn't), the reviewers will let you know if they think there is anyone else you should cite. As a reviewer, I always assume that when relevant work isn't cited i's because of an oversight, not plagiarism. It does sometimes happen that what you thought was an original contribution already exists in other work and in that case you will most likely get rejected because of that. Otherwise, everybody just assumed that it's a mistake or an oversight, and you just add the new citations when you revise your paper.

 

If you're talking about a paper for a class, you again just do your best. I think we need to be careful about what we call plagiarism. There was a discussion about this recently on the board. If you read someone's work and used it in your paper but didn't cite it, that's plagiarism. I assume you're not worried about that, because it's completely controllable. If you come up with some idea that it turns out already exists in the literature then, that happens. Especially in first drafts, which a paper like this would be. I assume you'd do a lit search so you should find obvious things but yeah, it's possible that someone said something in 1982 that you didn't catch. That's (partly) what your advisor is there for. Personally, for a class paper, I think that would be a fine turn of events. If we're talking about a longer term project, you have a responsibility to do a better lit review so you should know what ideas are out there. But again -- I wouldn't call it plagiarism unless you are aware of a paper or idea but didn't cite it. I think it's negligent not to do a thorough lit review before submitting a (journal) paper, but if you get caught by reviewers not citing important works that you should have known about, that mostly makes you look like a fool. You do that often enough, and no one will take you seriously. I don't think that's plagiarism.

[dstock]

Anyone else worry about plagiarism after writing and submitting a paper even though you know that you double and triple-checked every single citaiton and reference? I have no idea why, but for some reason I always feel certain that I missed something and the plagiarism police are out to get me. I guess all those plagiarism lectures in undergrad had an impact on me. It would make me feel better though if I knew I wasn't the only person who is completely neurotic about this.

 

I am the same!  Always worried I missed a citation or accidently worded something too similarly.  Even if I worded it completely myself I get worried that I read a certain phrasing and it got stuck in my head and then I wrote it, inadvertantly copying. 

[GnosisExchange]

Anyone else worry about plagiarism after writing and submitting a paper even though you know that you double and triple-checked every single citaiton and reference? I have no idea why, but for some reason I always feel certain that I missed something and the plagiarism police are out to get me. I guess all those plagiarism lectures in undergrad had an impact on me. It would make me feel better though if I knew I wasn't the only person who is completely neurotic about this.

I always freak out about this. You're not alone!

[imnotbatman]

THANK YOU for posting this!!! I always feel that I have 'accidentally' plagiarized or have not paraphrased well enough. In fact, I even run my drafts through the free online plagiarism checkers...and I am seriously thinking of actually buying an account on the paid sites. 

 

I would hate to have someone accuse me of plagiarism 20 years down the road and tarnish my rep... *crazythoughts*

[MakeYourself]

Thanks for all the responses. I feel better about my neuroticism now