Language log on citation plagiarism
Language Log: Citation Plagiarism?
From the Language Log entry linked above: "Plagiarism normally involves either the unacknowledged borrowing of someone else's idea or the unacknowledged borrowing of someone else's words. A third kind of plagiarism is, however, occasionally mentioned, namely the citation of a reference without acknowledging that it came from another source. If author Jones reads a paper by Smith and thereby learns of a paper by Doe and cites Doe without mentioning that he owes the reference to Smith, he has committed this kind of plagiarism, if plagiarism it be."
Bill Poser, author of the Language Log entry, goes on to argue why this type of plagarism is not, in his view, plagiarism, as there is no deception involved. The authors of the original reference may, in Dr Poser's view, "deserve more credit than they receive, but that is a different matter."
See here for the JISC plagiarism advisory service, which provides generic advice and guidance on all aspects of plagiarism prevention and detection to institutions, academics and students.
Comments
In reference to this topic: Several years ago, a study reported citation quoting by finding typos in reference list. Much better explanation is that authors do read the paper, but copy-and-paste reference to avoid tediously typing author lists, date, publication etc. OK, citation managers exist, but they are far from universal.
Second - many ideas or concepts in science, surprisingly, cannot be traced to one specific source. I tried once to put a reference to a concept of "indicator species" and "umbrella species". I failed. These are common ecological ideas, but they seem to have developed in a community without any single author writing clearly what it is. Citing some following study which listed examples of indicator species and umbrella species didn't seem right, either. Nor a bulky review or handbook which obviously re-used the idea.
Posted by: Jerzy | August 23, 2007 06:13 PM