April 26, 2004

Study Sheds Light on Academic Plagiarism

Dr. Walter Enders (left), professor of economics and Bidgood Chair of Economics and Finance, and Dr. Gary Hoover, assistant professor of economics, wrote a research paper reporting instances of plagiarism in academic economics journals. Their paper was inspired by having been plagiarized themselves. (Photo: Rickey Yanaura)

by Bill Gerdes

A research paper written by two UA economics professors sheds new light on the problem of plagiarism in scholarly publications. This research was motivated by the fact that these professors, themselves, were the victims of plagiarism.

Written by Dr. Gary Hoover, assistant professor of economics, and Dr. Walter Enders, professor of economics and Bidgood Chair of Economics and Finance, the paper reports the results of a survey regarding the instances of plagiarism reported by journal editors in the economics profession.

The survey found that nearly a fourth of responding editors encountered one case of plagiarism in a typical year. In addition, the two researchers learned that less than 19 percent of the responding journals have a formal policy on plagiarism.

A key aspect of the research is an editor's perception of the appropriate definition of plagiarism, the authors said. The authors noted that a majority of the responding editors considered the use "of several unattributed sentences or a proof" to be plagiarism. Most also thought that the use of privately collected data without permission constituted plagiarism. However, most of the journals without formal plagiarism polices rely on copyright agreements signed by the prospective authors that certify the originality of the work. "A person can plagiarize without violating copyright law since plagiarism includes the unattributed use of an idea or theme," said Enders.

Hoover indicated that "there is a great deal of variance in what is considered plagiarism and what an appropriate response to plagiarism should be. Since there is no one sanctioning body over the profession, each editor is left to make up his or her mind regarding the topic and there are inconsistencies across journals. This might cause some journals to be targeted by plagiarizers."

Plagiarism has long been a concern in scholarly publication circles, where researchers rely heavily on information from earlier publications from other authors. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (April 2, 2004), a University of New Hampshire professor was disciplined for "scholarly misconduct" after he plagiarized the governor of Delaware in a column published last year in a newspaper. In addition, another university administrator was accused of plagiarizing parts of an opinion article he wrote for a New England newspaper, according to an item in Money & Management Notes.

About a year ago, Hoover and Enders sent out about 470 surveys to editors or co-editors of various journals used by economists as outlets for their work. Editors had the option of responding on-line or with a paper survey form. The response rate was about 28 percent, representing 130 journals, which included the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Finance and Journal of the American Statistical Association.

"One of our concerns was whether journals had formal policies in place regarding plagiarism," Enders said. "Of the 127 journal editors who responded to an inquiry concerning this point, 19 percent said they had a formal policy."

According to the research paper, one editor said, "Publishing a plagiarism policy suggests that the editors treat the potential contributors as potential cheaters and primitives in general. Not a very polite attitude towards contributors." This, however, does not negate the fact that plagiarism has been increasing over the years and little has been done regarding punishment of those who are caught.

If the incident is clearly plagiarism, the researchers said, 99 of the 100 respondents said they would probably tell the original author about the plagiarism, and 78 percent said they would ban future submissions by that author. Less than half reported that they would tell the plagiarizer's supervisor. "The incentive to plagiarize now becomes a matter of calculated risk. That being the probability of being caught compounded by the probability of being caught by an editor inclined to inform one's supervisor," said Hoover.

When Hoover and Enders informed the editor of the journal where the plagiarizer had submitted his work, they were told that the journal would not be inclined to pursue the matter. The plagiarizer's supervisor was never informed and he was actually encouraged to submit to the journal in the future. Enders and Hoover then set out to see how often this type of thing was occurring in the field.

The complete questionnaire and the list of responding journals are available at www.cba.ua.edu/~ghoover and at the Journal of Economic Literature website.

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