When I use a word . . . Academic fraud—plagiarism

Abstract

Of the various types of academic misdemeanours and felonies, perhaps plagiarism is the most difficult and complex to study and write about. Even defining it is difficult. The US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) defines plagiarism as “the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit,” but how do you define when it has occurred? What are the quantitative and qualitative thresholds? What are the different types of plagiarism? Why does plagiarism occur? How does one detect it? What is self-plagiarism and should we even call it that? There is an enormous literature on the subject and it needs to be tamed; an annotated bibliography would help, if anyone would create one. Perhaps they already have? The third member of the academic felonies trio, after fabrication and falsification, which I have previously discussed,12 is plagiarism. It may not seem obvious, but the origin of the word “plagiarism” is buried in the hypothetical IndoEuropean root PLĀK, meaning flat. The Greek word πλάξ meant a flat plate, from which we get “placoid” an adjective referring to the type of scale that covers certain cartilaginous fishes, of the order Placoidei, including sharks and rays, now known as Elasmobranchii, ἐλασμός being a beaten out metal plate. Another group of fishes, now extinct, with flat bony plates encasing the head and thorax, went under the name of placoderms. Other flat words that come from the same root include placenta, which in Latin meant a flat cake, and leukoplakia, the flat white precancerous patches that are sometimes seen covering mucous membranes, typically in parts of the mouth and on the vulva, where it is also called lichen sclerosus or kraurosis vulvae (Greek κραῦρος brittle, dry); in men it can affect the penis, when it is known as balanitis xerotica …