2008/03/11 by Mathieu Bouville
Business, Management and Accounting · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Academic integrity and plagiarism #Copyright and Intellectual Property #Freedom of Expression and Defamation #physics.ed-ph #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11948-008-9057-6
published as Science and Engineering Ethics vol. 14, pp. 311-322 (2008) · 8 pages
arxiv created 2008/03/11 · openalex publication_date 2008/03/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people's intellectual contribution is wrong, they do not apply to the copying of words. Copying a few sentences that contain no original idea (e.g. in the introduction) is of marginal importance compared to stealing the ideas of others. The two must be clearly distinguished, and the 'plagiarism' label should not be used for deeds which are very different in nature and importance. Keywords: academic dishonesty; academic integrity; academic misconduct; cheating; copyright infringement; ethics; intellectual property; research misconduct