What is plagiarism and fair-dealing?
Since first setting foot in a university, you have likely been lectured on the fact that plagiarism is bad. However, you are much less likely to discuss the finer points of what plagiarism actually is beyond the vague understanding of it as ‘copying somebody else’s work’.
Furthermore, with so many different academic conventions and styles of teaching across the globe, plagiarism standards can vary greatly across languages and cultures. With that in mind, it is important to research the plagiarism standards in the language, and even the country, that you are writing for. In English, for example, there are so many differences between UK and US language conventions that you can hear quite conflicting advice if you don’t choose which country your article will cater to (although sometimes journals will specify which version they want).
While we cannot cover plagiarism standards in every language and every country, this page is going to explain the standards of plagiarism in English-language academia: referencing systems, types of plagiarism, and how plagiarism standards differ from copyright law.
Jump straight to:
What is plagiarism?
Many sources will cite some variation of the same definition of plagiarism. Here is the University of Edinburgh’s version:
‘Plagiarism is the act of copying or including in one’s own work, without adequate acknowledgement, intentionally or unintentionally, the work of another or your own previously published original work.’
The convention in the UK is to reference any element of your work that you did not originate – be it images, tables, ideas from a lecture or any other elements of work that can be credited to someone else.
While many referencing systems will follow similar rubric and convey similar information, be sure to review a journal’s style guide to see which referencing system they use. This can affect the order in which information is listed, the capitalisation and/or italicising of referenced works, or even how much information needs to be included in a reference.
Types of plagiarism
Plagiarism constitutes a great deal more than claiming a direct quote as your own or copying a paragraph of your article from Wikipedia.
Publishers and journal editorial boards typically have a policy on publication ethics, which they write using guidelines from larger organisations. Edinburgh University Press refers to COPE (Committee of Publication Ethics) guidelines and processes to review claims of plagiarism.
COPE is a great place to begin research into plagiarism standards, as they are a global organisation with procedures and documents in several languages and sectors of academia.
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Appropriating an author’s ideas/data
As well as direct quotations, it is also essential to reference any theories or studies that you mention in your work. This can include arguments taken from lectures, conference talks and any other occasion where a scholar has presented their ideas verbally or in written form.
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Autoplagiarism
It is possible to plagiarise yourself. While you are unlikely to complain that you have given yourself credit in the wrong piece of work, not referencing yourself correctly can discredit the academic rigour of your work and make a reader question your referencing in the rest of the article. This can also affect the ranking of your article in online systems, such as Google Scholar or BAIDU.
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Plagiarism in translation
While a quotation in your work may be your own translation, the idea itself (also known as the intellectual property) still belongs to someone else who needs to be cited. In many cases, journals will prefer you to include the original quote as well as your translated version, although be sure to check the journal’s style guide on this point.
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Preprint plagiarism
Although failing to reference pre-publication manuscripts (particularly those that aren’t published until after your article due to longer peer review processes) is more complicated to judge, it is still the use of content that isn’t your own. Therefore, in English-language academia, it would be considered plagiarism.
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Image manipulation
Images and graphs also need to be referenced, as they are displaying information that you didn’t originate. Doctoring an image to support your argument, or claiming an image as the result of your own study, is considered plagiarism.
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Fabricated data
This is more likely to occur in scientific journals but it is still important to be aware of. It is always frustrating when research does not provide the result you want. However, fudging the numbers to suit your argument (or copying somebody else’s data to support an overarching theory) is considered plagiarism.
What is copyright infringement?
Although copyright infringement and plagiarism both involve the improper use of somebody else’s work, plagiarism is an ethical issue rather than a legal one. While plagiarism is frowned upon and has significant consequences for the reputation of your work, copyright infringement is illegal.
So what is the difference between the two? As we have already covered, plagiarism constitutes claiming somebody else’s work as your own. Therefore, if you were to copy an entire article and reference it perfectly this would not be plagiarism. However, the work is still a copy. Instead, this would be an infringement of copyright: an author’s legal rights to control how their original material is used and reused.
Fair dealing (or fair use, as it’s called in the US) is the umbrella of legal exceptions to UK/US copyright law. It allows certain uses of copyrighted material without seeking the permission of, or making payments to, the rights holders (usually either the author or the publisher of an article).
So which uses are permitted as fair dealing?
- For research and private study (for individual use only).
- For the purpose of criticism or review.
- For purposes of news reporting.
- (In the US only) For educational purposes.
Even in these permitted circumstances, the use of copyrighted material still has to be ‘fair’, meaning it must not undermine or compete with the original publication.
In everyday life, we see this most commonly with visual and audio media, such as Youtube video essays, podcasts or radio shows. Often, if these creators do include other works, they have to edit them in some way (such as removing audio or editing the work into short segments) to meet that standard of ‘not undermining or competing with the original’. It is also still essential to acknowledge and accurately reference the original source (especially in the context of criticism and review).
The golden rule of plagiarism is ‘If in doubt, include a reference.’ The standards are deliberately vague to allow for subjective judgement on a case-by-case basis. With this in mind, it is always better to be safe than sorry.
