Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing

Miguel Roig, Ph.D.

First on-line version published in September, 2003

Revised on-line version published in August, 2006

Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to Miguel Roig, Ph.D.

Open and Save Entire Document

In recognizing the importance of educating aspiring scientists in the responsible conduct of research (RCR), the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), began sponsoring in 2002 the creation of instructional resources to address this pressing need. The present guide on avoiding plagiarism and other inappropriate writing practices was created, in part, to meet this need. Its purpose is to help students, as well as professionals, identify and prevent such practices and to develop an awareness of ethical writing. This guide is one of the many products stemming from ORI’s educational initiatives in the RCR.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

On ethical writing

Plagiarism

· Plagiarism of ideas

· Acknowledging the source of our ideas

· Plagiarism of text

· Inappropriate paraphrasing

· Paraphrasing and plagiarism: What the writing guides say

· Examples of paraphrasing: Good and bad

· Paraphrasing highly technical language

· Plagiarism and common knowledge

· Plagiarism and authorship disputes

Self plagiarism

· Redundant and Duplicate (i.e., dual) Publications

o Academic self plagiarism

· Salami Slicing (i.e., data fragmentation)

· Copyright Law

o Copyright Infringement, Fair Use, and Plagiarism

· Text recycling

o Forms of acceptable text Recycling

o ‘Borderline’/unacceptable cases of text recycling

The Other Crimes of Writing

· Ethically questionable citation practices

o Carelessness in citing sources

o Inappropriate Manipulation of references

o Relying on an abstract or a preliminary version of a paper while citing the published version

o Citing sources that were not read or thoroughly understood

o Borrowing extensively from a source but only acknowledging a small portion of what is borrowed

· Ethically inappropriate writing practices

o Selective reporting of literature

o Selective reporting of methodology

o Selective reporting of results

· Authorship issues and conflicts of interest

o Deciding on authorship

o Establishing authorship

o Authorship in faculty-student collaborations

o Ghost Authorship

· Sources on publication and authorship from which the above guidelines were derived

o A brief overview on conflicts of interest

· Links to resources on Conflicts of Interest listed by ORI

List of ethical writing guidelines

Paraphrasing/Plagiarism Exercise

References

Acknowledgements