Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T13:11:11.964Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Recycling Texts or Stealing Time?: Plagiarism, Authorship, and Credit in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2012

Mario Biagioli
Mario Biagioli*
Affiliation:
STS Program and School of Law, UC Davis, mbiagioli@ucdavis.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scientific plagiarism is as sui generis as the author function in science. A study of the specificity of scientific plagiarism and the ways in which it diverges from appropriation in other disciplines allows us to question traditional definitions that focus on the copying of published copyrighted materials. The form of plagiarism that is most damaging to scientists does not involve publications, is largely outside the scope of copyright law, and is unlikely to be detected by textual-similarity algorithms. The same features that make this kind of plagiarism difficult to identify and control also provide a powerful window on the unique construction of authorial credit in science, the problems of peer review, and the limitations of plagiarism surveillance technologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 19 , Special Issue 3: Intangible Property at the Periphery: Expanding Enclosure in the 21st Century , August 2012 , pp. 453 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Historical Association. Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct. ⟨http://www.historians.org/pubs/free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm#Plagiarism⟩.Google Scholar
Anonymous. An Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Literary Property. London: Flexney, 1762.Google Scholar
Bayle, Pierre. The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle. The Second Edition, Carefully Collated with the Several Editions of the Original. Vol. 2. London: Knapton, 1734.Google Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. “From Book Censorship to Peer Review.” Emergences 12 (2002): 11–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. “Rights or Rewards? Changing Frameworks of Scientific Authorship.” In Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science, edited by Biagioli, Mario and Galison, Peter, 253–80. New York: Routledge, 2002.Google Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. “From Ciphers to Confidentiality: Secrecy, Openness, and Priority in Science.” British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012): 213–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biagioli, Mario. “A Crime of Kinship: Plagiarism and the Gendering of Authorship.” Theory, Culture & Society (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Geoff. “Turkish Physicists Face Accusations of Plagiarism.” Nature 449 (2007): 8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deazley, Ronan. On the Origin of the Right to Copy: Charting the Movement of Copyright Law in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1695–1775). Hart: Oxford, 2004.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (1992): 3–7.Google Scholar
De Vries, Raymond, Anderson, Melissa, and Martinson, Brian. “Normal Misbehavior: Scientists Talk about the Ethics of Research.” Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 1 (2006): 43–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Errami, Mounir, and Garner, Harold. “A Tale of Two Citations.” Nature 451 (2008): 397–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Errami, Mounir, Sun, Zhaohui, Long, Tara, George, Angela, and Garner, Harold. “De'ja' vu: A Database of Highly Similar Citations in the Scientific Literature.” Nucleic Acids Research 37 (database issue) 2009: D921–D24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fauchart, Emmanuelle, and von Hippel, Eric. “Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs.” MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 4576–06 (1 January 2006) ⟨http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=881781⟩ accessed 20 October 2011.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, translated and edited by Bouchard, Donald F. and Simon, Sherry, 113–38. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Garner, Harold. “Publication Integrity Quantified.” Office of Research Integrity Newsletter 17, no. 4 (2009): 1–6.Google Scholar
Garner, Harold, Pulverer, Bernd, Marusić, Ana, Petrovechi, Mladen, Loadsman, John, Zhang, Yuehong, McIntosh, Ian, Titus, Sandra, Roig, Miguel, and Anderson, Melissa. “How to Stop Plagiarism.” Nature 481 (2012): 21–22.Google Scholar
Hall, Rupert. Philosophers at War: The Quarrel between Newton and Leibniz. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelty, Christopher. “Inventing Copyleft.” In Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective, edited by Biagioli, Mario, Jaszi, Peter, and Woodmansee, Martha, 133–48. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Kevles, Daniel. The Baltimore Affair: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character. New York: Norton, 1998.Google Scholar
LaFollette, Marcel C.Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, Tara, Errami, Mounir, George, Angela, Sun, Zhaohui, and Garner, Harold “Responding to Possible Plagiarism.” Science 323 (2009): 1293–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loshin, Jacob. “Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law.” In Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays, edited by Corcos, Christine, 123–42. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Mallon, Thomas. Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism. New York: Penguin Books, 1989.Google Scholar
Martinson, Brian, Anderson, Melissa, and de Vries, Raymond. “Scientists Behaving Badly.” Nature 435 (2005): 737–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 9th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1981.Google Scholar
Merton, Robert. “Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science.” American Sociological Review 22 (1957): 635–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merton, Robert. “The Matthew Effect in Science.” Science 159 (1968): 56–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Modern Language Association, “Statement of Professional Ethics.” ⟨http://www.mla.org/repview_profethics⟩ accessed 15 October 2012.Google Scholar
Moore Howard, Rebecca. Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 1999.Google Scholar
Moore Howard, Rebecca. “Sexuality, Textuality: The Cultural Work of Plagiarism.” College English 62 (2000): 473–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliar, Dotan, and Sprigman, Chris. “Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy.” In Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property: Creative Production in Legal and Cultural Perspective, edited by Biagioli, Mario, Jaszi, Peter, and Woodmansee, Martha, 385–98. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Price, Alan. “Cases of Plagiarism Handled by the United States Office of Research Integrity 1992–2005.” Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification 1 (2006): 1–11.Google Scholar
Randall, Marilyn. “Imperial Plagiarism.” In Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World, edited by Buranen, Lise and Roy, Alice M., 131–40. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Rennie, Drummond. “Plagiarism: The Perspective of an Editor of a Biomedical Journal.” Proceedings of the ORI/AAAS Conference on Plagiarism and Theft of Ideas (21–22 June 1993, Bethesda, MD): 109–21.Google Scholar
Roig, Miguel. “Plagiarism in the Sciences: Conference Highlights.” Science Editor 29 (2006): 48–49.Google Scholar
Roig, Miguel. “Some Reflections on Plagiarism: The Problem of Paraphrasing in the Sciences.” European Science Editing 33 (2007): 38–41.Google Scholar
Rossiter, Margaret. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 325–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, Pamela. “Self-Plagiarism or Fair Use?” Communications of the ACM 37 (1994): 21–25.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Simon. “Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy.” Social Studies of Science 16 (1986): 387–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tushnet, Rebecca. “Payment in Credit: Copyright Law and Subcultural Creativity.” Law and Contemporary Problems 70 (2007): 135–174.Google Scholar
Vasconcelos, Sonia, Leta, Jacqueline, Costa, Lídia, Pinto, André, and Sorenson, Martha. “Discussing Plagiarism in Latin American science: Brazilian Researchers Begin to Address an Ethical Issue.” EMBO Reports 10 (2009): 677–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wikipedia. “Hardy-Weinberg Principle.” ⟨http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy-Weinberg_principle⟩ accessed 8 August 2012.Google Scholar
Xiguang, Li, and Lei, Xiong. “Chinese Researchers Debate Rash of Plagiarism Cases.” Science 274 (1996): 337–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yilmaz, Ihsan. “Plagiarism? No, We're just Borrowing Better English.” Nature 449 (2007): 658.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed