Misunderstood about plagiarism

Plagiarism is theft and the line is simple, writes Trond Amundsen. According to the NTNU professor, not much is needed. A short sentence can be enough.

The important thing is whether one has published someone else’s text as one’s own, to a large or small extent, Amundsen writes: “If you cross that line, you have committed theft of other people’s intellectual property. Then you have plagiarized. In other words, cheated, or cheated.”

No, it’s not that simple.

The assessment of what is “Plagiarism”, “cheating” and “cheating” must be made more reassuring. Different norm systems must be kept apart. The threshold for plagiarism is higher than what Amundsen writes. There is a difference between literary theft and a breach of good reference practice.

Whether the text similarity entails copyright plagiarism, must be decided on the basis of the Copyright Act. The application of the law here requires both literary and legal competence. Case law shows that the assessment can be very demanding. The Storting has therefore chosen to channel all copyright infringement lawsuits to the Oslo district court (compulsory jurisdiction).

The Copyright Act does not prohibit reuse of “a small sentence” or other people’s intellectual property “in a small way”. More is needed. In order for textual similarity to result in what Amundsen refers to as “theft of intellectual property”, there must be something about the fragments that are reused, something in verbal language which means that one draws on the “height of the work” of the submission. If not, reuse is permitted.

Neither is the plagiarism assessment simple within research ethics. Here, the assessment must be based on the research community’s own guidelines, which include distinguishes between breach of good reference practice (sloppy) and scientific misconduct (cheating).

The scrutiny committee’s practice shows that misconduct cases about possible plagiarism can be demanding to process. The reason is, among other things, that in the individual case it can be difficult to draw the line between a breach of good referencing practice (sloppy) and scientific misconduct (plagiarism).

Whether the students’ text similarity leads to plagiarism (cheating and grounds for exclusion), must be decided on the basis of the institutions’ cheating regulations. These are guidelines that vary from institution to institution, from subject to subject and from exam to exam. So does the practice of the cheating regulations.

As the Supreme Court pointed out in the Cheating Judgment from 2015, the institutions only have “a certain freedom” to decide what constitutes cheating. The assessment must promote the statutory purpose of the examination, which is that the students’ knowledge must be tested and assessed in a “professionally reassuring manner”. Is it academically reassuring to set the threshold for plagiarism so low that it leads to cheating and grounds for expulsion if students reuse “a small sentence” or other people’s work “in a small way”?

Within my profession — which is the legal thing — it has never been considered academically reassuring to regard the students as academic thieves, just because they have, without disclosing it, been injured for reusing a small sentence. The threshold for plagiarism is much higher within law and the humanities, which is also documented by extensive practice from the Joint Complaints Board.

To reuse “a small sentence” or someone else’s work “in a small way”, is not necessarily unlawful. As the Supreme Court stated in the Cheating judgment from 2015, a litigation reservation must be interpreted in the law’s concept of cheating. Actions that are obviously not suitable for giving students an unjustified advantage are excluded. These are actions that the institutions do not have the opportunity to define as cheating.

Amundsen is right that the institutions should adopt rules of the road that clearly indicate the kind of text similarities that lead to cheating. But this is probably not where the shoe hits. The institutions have already done what they can to adopt such rules. The challenge arises when the rules are to be applied. This is where the assessment becomes difficult, i.a. because it must be done concretely and in accordance with the purpose provisions in the uh Act.

It cannot be so that we accept “a little cheating” but not “a lot of cheating”, concludes Amundsen. No one disagrees with that. The only question is: What is a little cheating? That the student, without informing about it, reuses a small sentence? Really?