Defining Plagiarism

There was an interesting article in the Virginia Tech News this morning that discussed VBI's investigation into "text duplication" in scientific research.  Essentially, researchers at  VBI used a computer program, eTBLAST, to scan through 72,011 free full-text articles in PubMed Central and compare text.  Overall, they found that introductions and review articles tended to repeat text from previous, related articles.  The hope is that, with this research, researchers will bring an awareness to articles that will result in more innovative, original work.  Additionally, a representative from VBI mentioned that he hoped this work would help establish guidelines about what may or may not be acceptable text duplication:  "Before crossing the line between acceptable and unacceptable writing, it is important to know the location of the line.” You can read the entirety of the researchers' article, published in PLoS One, here.


As a librarian, I am well aware that this line is difficult to grasp, and difficult to explain.  Avoiding plagiarism, though, isn't so difficult.  Attributing sources and paraphrasing are two techniques that can help younger researchers avoid the problem altogether.  At University Libraries, we have an entire guide devoted to nearly all of the citation styles available:  http://www.lib.vt.edu/find/citation/ 


Overall, it is very interesting to note that plagiarism is a problem that plagues all levels of scientific research.  Learning good writing habits early on, though, is a sure way to help stop plagiarism's spread.