METM24 Chronicles: Mary Ellen Kerans

Recognizing plagiarism and its cousins – from a manuscript editor’s point of view

It was 8:45 on a Saturday morning at METM24 in Carcassonne and Mary Ellen Kerans* was presenting on plagiarism and its near relatives. Were we awake? Sitting comfortably? We’d better have been because Mary Ellen was about to take a fast, deep dive into why academic plagiarism has been in the news lately and what authors’ editors can do about it. My first experience of a MET meeting in 2015 was a “MEK” workshop and I’d not forgotten it. The first time I’d found truly challenging conference contents relevant to my work! I’ve been coming back ever since.

Mary Ellen explained that she’d be building on a video conference she gave for SENSE on former Harvard president Claudine Gay’s resignation, related to accusations of plagiarism that arose after Congressional hearings on antisemitic threats at campus demonstrations and whether they violated Harvard’s Code of Conduct. As a translator, I could sympathize with Gay’s dilemma as she tried to give an answer faithful to the contents of the rules: “Depends on the context…”. The case was tangled, but Mary Ellen had a timeline to put us on the same page. I learned that so-called “plagiarism detection software” that allowed for accusations based on “similarity reports” first became available in the new millennium.

We weren’t there to sort out the truth of Gay’s case, but the timeline slide also revealed anomalies from similarity reports of Gay’s work that Mary Ellen called the “cousins” of real plagiarism: patch (mosaic) writing; confusing flow and argumentation; improper/insufficient referencing and unacknowledged use of a method and its description; and boilerplate language or clichés. She reminded us that quantifying similarity reinforced what most older adults were taught at school: not to copy, but to paraphrase. Of course, this would not resolve the problem. The “research misconduct” definitions used by journal editors today derive from efforts by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to set out cross-disciplinary criteria. In essence, “appropriation of … ideas, processes, results, or words … without giving credit”. And, interestingly, “committed intentionally”. Textual plagiarism was just one type of appropriation: even if all the words are changed (as in translation), it might still be plagiarism if the ideas are appropriated. For a good read, Mary Ellen recommended the American Medical Association’s history of these changing ideas (AMA Manual of Style, 11th ed., pp. 213-4). One university defined mosaic writing as intertwining an author’s own thinking with that of an original source, leading to “a confused mess”.

The ORI also described misconduct as involving “a significant departure from accepted practices of a relevant research community”. Mary Ellen said this meant that judges should be peers. With that in mind, we saw examples of improper interpreting of similarity reports by non-peers. One example that seemed like plagiarism in Gay’s work, based on similar phrasing in an uncited work, actually came from a footnote in Gay’s essay where she had properly cited the original source of the data.

Mary Ellen then gave an example of how “oddities” in a text can help a human editor identify true plagiarism. To me, coming from a social sciences and arts background, the signs she highlighted (in a medical text) seemed very subtle, leaving me impressed by the skills of authors’ editors in the sciences. I’ll be on the lookout for similar applications in other disciplines.

We ended with a list of ways to help authors avoid the pitfalls of plagiarism and its cousins, such as working to reinforce flow (like rheme-to-theme cohesion) and voice in argumentation, correcting misunderstandings of terminology transfers (i.e. between source and draft) or poorly placed citations, and making sure that authors cite even their own methods. She encouraged our efforts in typically succinct style: “If you do it right, they don’t get mad”.

During the Q&A, one attendee noted that everything was assumed to be OK if peer reviewers didn’t pick up plagiarism. Mary Ellen added that this was why detection could not be left to peer reviewers alone. Another audience member described her bewildering experience of self-plagiarism, echoing Mary Ellen’s earlier comments that many writers were unaware of the issues. Clearly, the debate would continue.

 

*Sign in to the MET website to view Mary Ellen’s profile.

This METM24 presentation was chronicled by Kate Major Patience.

Featured photo courtesy of MET.

One thought on “METM24 Chronicles: Mary Ellen Kerans

  1. Lovely write-up, Kate! I had a similarly exciting experience at my first METM and have been coming back for the very same reason. This was such a practicable presentation. Might handling plagiarism (avoidance, detection, accusations) be a topic for a future MET Conversation?

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