Text- Based Plagiarism in Scientific Writing: What Chinese Supervisors Think About Copying and How to Reduce it in Students’ Writing. A short correspondence published in a September 2. Nature, with its eye- catching title, “Chinese journal finds 3. The correspondence was authored by Yuehong Zhang (2. Journal Director of the Journal of Zhejiang University- Science (JZUS), an English- medium SCI (Science Citation Index) journal which is based at a prestigious university in China and which receives most of its submissions from mainland China (Zhang 2. By saying “we have detected unoriginal material in a staggering 3. Zhang 2. 01. 0a, p. Nature report does not indicate the extent of such “unoriginal material.” Elsewhere in a paper dated a little earlier, Zhang (2. What might the author of an accused paper in JZUS be arguing? With reference to several publicized cases of plagiarism involving Chinese authors (see Li and Xiong 1. Rodiek 2. 00. 7) and other English as an Additional Language (EAL) authors (see Brumfiel 2. We did not copy the research (we have original data); we only reused some language.”Apparently, while it may be viable to suggest a distinction in scientific writing between the borrowing of science/ideas and of language/text (e. Flowerdew and Li 2. Bouville 2. 00. 8), such a distinction is only relative: clearly the greater the extent of the copying of text (by paragraphs rather than just lifting a couple of sentences, for instance), the more extensive the copying of ideas is involved. But the crux of the issue here is: in scientific writing, is language copying also plagiarism? To journal editors (e. Mosher n. d., cited in Perry 2. Williams 2. 00. 7; Zhang 2. ![]() David Williams, Editor- in- Chief of Biomaterials, recently raised concerns over “plagiarism with respect to the language of manuscripts” and pointed out that although stealing of science and data has been rare, “the misappropriation of language from other authors” is a “quite significant trend” (Williams 2. What David Williams calls “linguistic plagiarism” is an issue especially pertinent to EAL authors, as evidenced by some recent reports and correspondence pieces carried in Nature (e. Brumfiel 2. 00. 7; Butler 2. Yilmaz 2. 00. 7). In the meantime, noticeably, journal editors have suggested “senior authors” (Williams, ibid.) or “mentors of young researchers” (“Plagiarism pinioned” 2. With China’s continuous rise in the international publication arena in the past decade (Mu 2. Chinese scientists’ ethical conduct (Qiu 2. ![]() Chinese context would seem particularly worthwhile. The present paper aims to illuminate a small sample of Chinese supervisors’ views and their teaching practices concerning text- based plagiarism, by drawing upon some interview data collected in a larger project that investigates Chinese scientists writing for international publication. It is hoped that this exploratory study conducted at a major university in China, despite its limitations, would help to throw some light on the potentiality of senior authors mentoring novices in EAL contexts and the efforts that can be made in the wider scientific community to support scientists in writing against text- based plagiarism. Text- Based Plagiarism in Scientific Writing as an Issue of Growing Concern. In the influential pamphlet On being a scientist: Responsible conduct in research (1. US National Academy of Sciences in coalition with other scientific research organizations of the country, plagiarism is defined as “using the ideas or words of another person without giving appropriate credit” (p. This definition clearly is in strict alignment with that ordained in English- dominant universities and meant to have cross- disciplinary application (see e. Pecorari 2. 00. 1). For example, in Harvard guide to using sources: What constitutes plagiarism? In academic writing, it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper.” In other words, in the orthodox definition, in scientific writing, as in writing in any other disciplines, using ideas or language from sources without proper acknowledgement constitutes plagiarism. However, while in universities students may be caught for plagiarizing a whole paper or a group of sentences, reports of plagiarism in scientific publication have centered around the stealing of data (duplication of the research itself), but rarely, if ever, concerns the copying of a few sentences (duplication of segments of text). Yet significantly, there seems to be sign that this may be changing, with the copying of language becoming an issue more prominent than ever before in scientific publication, probably to a large extent thanks to the introduction of automated anti- plagiarism screening, a recently developed and widely acclaimed tool being Cross. Check. 1 Cross. Check would catch “very blatant unethical cases of plagiarism” (Butler 2. The text- matching tool would also throw up text matches that are of “mitigating circumstances,” “such as a scientist with a poor command of English paraphrasing some sentences of the introduction from similar work,” as a recent editorial in Nature put it (“Plagiarism pinioned” 2. The same editorial suggested that a response to plagiarism of different “degrees of severity” should be “proportionate” (ibid.), implying that the “mitigating circumstances” named above should not be treated the same as the stealing of data; however, nowhere does the editorial say that the “mitigating circumstances” are acceptable in submissions or publications. Experienced Versus Inexperienced Authors. In a pioneering originality- verifying screening of ar. Xiv, a preprint database of mostly physics papers, Sorokina et al. Turnitin creates tools for K-12 and higher education that improve writing and prevent plagiarism. Turnitin’s formative feedback and originality checking services. English writers who fear garbling content by modifying it” (ibid.). In a series of studies focused on Chinese novice scientists (doctoral students) writing for publication in English, the present author found language reuse to be a commonly used composing strategy among the novices when they attempted to write their first paper; and they are able to justify such a strategy in every section of an IMRD (Introduction–Methods–Results–Discussion) paper (Li 2. Flowerdew and Li 2. For instance, using sentences from sources with relatively minor adjustment in writing the introduction of a paper is considered acceptable by some novices, as it concerns the presentation of shared knowledge or background information; and reproducing experimental descriptions in the methods section from a previous paper in one’s home research group is fine because of some shared experimental procedure. However, the textual copying in the novices’ initial drafts can be effectively reduced in the subsequent revision, where the supervisor usually plays a key role, with the novices participating to various extents (e. Li 2. 01. 1). If senior authors, or more experienced authors, are expected to mentor or educate novices against textual plagiarism (“Plagiarism pinioned” 2. Williams 2. 00. 7), there has been little research on how the former reckons the issue of textual copying or how they may work against it in their local context. Sporadic evidence found in the literature reveals scientist advisers expressing disapproval of their advisees’ textual borrowing in writing degree dissertations (Dong 1. Chinese doctoral science students at an American university). Further research is needed to explore senior authors’ perspectives upon and approaches to textual copying among novices. Such research, when conducted in an EAL context, will go some way toward illuminating the issue in the larger scientific community, and facilitate looking for measures that can be taken to support EAL authors in their effort to get published internationally. The present study thus aims to take a preliminary step toward filling such a gap in the literature, by interviewing a group of Chinese supervisors in a range of science disciplines, and addressing the following two research questions: 1. What attitudes do these Chinese supervisors have toward textual copying in writing for publication? What perspectives do they take upon students’ textual copying and what do they do if they educate their students against textual copying? This study investigated Iranian language students’ perception of and familiarity with plagiarism, their attitudes toward their professors regarding this issue, and.Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker’s weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and how you can use its waters to reflect on and improve your life. Text-based plagiarism, or textual copying, typically in the form of replicating or patchwriting sentences in a row from sources, seems to be an issue of growing. ![]() Grammar Check, Plagiarism Detection, and more. The best time to receive feedback is before you turn your assignment in. Sometimes valuable feedback comes too late, which is why our automated proofreading tool can be especially helpful - - not just for detecting grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors, but also for giving helpful tips that make you a better writer. Our AI engine, Grendel, works tirelessly providing feedback that you can incorporate into your text before you pass it on for a final grade from a human.
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