Under the pressure of the Publish or Perish system, plagiarism is spreading throughout academia. It is a phenomenon that is difficult to quantify , even though , judging from blogs about the topic, PhD theses where this problem is visible are legion.5 tips to avoid plagiarizing... Accidentally or not.
"Research is unanimous in confirming that the plagiarist usually develops this deviant behavior during his doctoral studies", assures Michelle Bergadaa, a marketing and communications professor from Geneva University (Switzerland) and a plagiarism specialist. However, it is difficult to quantify this practice : In a report on fraud and plagiarism dating from April 2012, the French General Inspectorate of the Administration of National Education and Research (IGAENR) indicates that no national census of student disciplinary referrals is conducted in higher education institutions. (Disciplinary referrals are only used for extreme plagiarism cases anyway).
For PhD students, it is nonetheless necessary to fully understand the rules. It is the Intellectual Property Code that defines plagiarism and counterfeiting as follows :
"Any reproduction, representation or distribution via whatever means of an intellectual work in violation with author's rights". This implies that in every copy of a third party 's work, it is necessary to clearly indicate the name of the author and the source, notably by using quotation marks. However, be careful about paraphrasing. It is not enough to simply replace words by others ; the sentence's structure must be rethought, without forgetting to cite your source.
Therefore, plagiarizing verbatim an introduction is just as reprehensible as copying a diagram without authorization. Nevertheless, according to the young woman, assessment is also at fault : "in front of the thesis defense committee, scientific results will of course be valued which is not necessarily the case for a well written introduction."