A fellow grad student copied my work

[Sunny_10]

Hi all,

I signed up to post this question, because I am struggling with it. I am a first year PhD student, and we have several online forums where we post and debate the material. This is the 2nd time I caught the same student copying my work word for word. The instructor so far has not noticed. My dilemma is that we are a group of friends/co-workers, and she's going trough something difficult in her life right now. I feel angry and betrayed, and I worry I might end up getting in trouble for it. I am unsure what steps to take, as this will disrupt a lot. I could use some advise, thank you all, greetings

[ZeChocMoose]

It is not clear to me what happened.  Did she copy one of your posts word for word?  Or did you discuss your answers beforehand and she decided to post what you discussed?  If it is the former - I would think that it would be obvious to your professor that she is just copying you and not adding anything to the discussion.  Time stamps are your friend here.  I am not sure why you think you would get in trouble for it.  If it is the later - I would suggest not discussing your answers with her before you post.  Sure - you can tell her that you are upset that she posted what you both talked about (if you want) - but I would probably just let it go and chalk this up to learning that she is someone that I wouldn't trust in the future with my academic ideas.  It is a fairly cheap lesson, honestly, given that this is just an online forum and she didn't steal your idea for a research project or something more serious.

Edited March 2, 2016 by ZeChocMoose

[fuzzylogician]

I am also not clear on what is happening. The main question I have for you is this: do you (or can you) have documentation that she is copying your work? That would be the first step to addressing this problem: make sure you can prove that it's your work, not someone else's. If we're talking about something as obvious as someone copy-pasting your older posts, I have to assume that the professor will notice eventually. If you both discussed the topic together and then posted similar ideas, I don't think you get to be upset at all, she is not copying from you anymore than you are copying from her. If you're sharing notes with her, stop doing that. I don't know how else she will have access to your work. Generally you should not allow random other people to have access to your research output, so this is a good lesson in that. Now, assuming you have proof, what to do is a question that's up to you. I don't think that bringing this to the professor's attention should cause you any trouble, but if this is your friend maybe the first step is to talk to her in private and tell her you know what she's doing and ask her to stop. Maybe offer to help if you know she's going through a difficult time, though of course you are not obligated to do that. Or you can choose to let it go if we're talking about a vague  accusation that you don't have the evidence to support.