editorial
There Can Be Shame and Punishment in Copy and Paste
T
he New York Times of August 2, 2010 contained an article entitled “For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste”. The article describes the casual attitude of many students about appropriating (copying) language from websites as part of their preparation of reports and papers for their classes. The article also described the unapologetic attitude of a teenage novelist who wrote about Berlin club life and included passages written by others in the novel. It is an especially disturbing trend that materials on the web whose authorship is not explicitly clear are regarded as “free” to appropriateOas if everything on the web is free. This is a trend that cannot and will not be tolerated in writing papers for peer-reviewed journals. It is called plagiarismOverbatim copying of the language of another person. Plagiarism is theft of another person’s intellectual expression(s) and passing it off as your own. That’s dishonest. There is an honest way to use the gifts of a previous writer, however, if a) “quotations are placed around the language copied” and b) reference is then given to the journal article or other source (such as a website address) from which the language was taken. Plagiarism is in my experience the most common ethical problem that a journal Editor encounters and has to deal with. Detection is most often by reviewers and by readers of articles that become published. There is a serious consequence of punishment for the guilty corresponding author. An often misunderstood kind of plagiarism is self-plagiarism, which would be, say, my copying sentences of text (or figures without alteration) from my previously published paper and using it in the writing of a new manuscript. Except that when I do that, the manuscript is not really new, but a pretense of being a newly formulated intellectual expression.
10.1021/AC102059T 2010 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Published on Web 08/12/2010
Done without attribution (i.e., quotes plus reference), I and most scholars would also hold that step as a dishonest one. The ACS Editors-in-Chief are presently considering language to be added to the “Ethical Guidelines” of ACS journals to clarify the rules regarding plagiarism. This is not a trivial task because of issues like “how many copied words are required to constitute plagiarism”. Some thingsOnotably descriptions of experimental detailsOare readily said in a limited dictionary of words: for example, “the product was filtered and washed” and “the structure was verified by NMR”. This is a grey area, but if a manuscript contains numerous examples of copied phrases, a conclusion that deliberate copying occurred becomes more persuasive. Why do authors of science manuscripts plagiarize previously written published works? Laziness is one apt explanation. Inexperience of the student writing the draft manuscript, especially when not in his or her native tongue, is another. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to mentor the student that while copying may be easier, it is nonetheless wrong. I have had punished corresponding authors plead that “it was the students,” to which I reply, “You are their teacher.” Good, clear writing is hard work, just as are designing good experiments and controls and data interpretation. The labor of skillful, creative experimentation and its interpretation can make a beautiful science story, which should not be spoiled by the laziness of plagiarism of someone else’s beautiful language. Make your own!
SEPTEMBER 1, 2010 / ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
7053
