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Article Excerpt
Abstract
Imagine yourself spending years conducting a research project and having it published as an article in a refereed journal, only to see a plagiarized copy of the article later published in another journal. Then imagine yourself being left to fight for your rights alone, and eventually finding out that it would be very difficult to hold the plagiarist accountable for what he or she did. The recent decision by the Association of Information Systems to create a standing committee on member misconduct suggests that while this type of situation may sound outrageous, it is likely to become uncomfortably frequent in the information systems research community if proper measures are not taken by a community-backed organization. In this article, we discuss factors that can drive plagiarism, as well as potential measures to prevent it. Our goal is to discuss alternative ways in which plagiarism can be prevented and dealt with when it arises. We hope to start a debate that provides the basis on which broader mechanisms to deal with plagiarism can be established, which we envision as being associated with and complementary to the committee created by the Association for Information Systems.
Keywords: Ethics, committees, community, plagiarism, information systems research
Introduction
Imagine yourself in the following situation. As an information systems (IS) researcher, you plan and conduct a large research project that involves data collection and analysis over approximately four years. After a great deal of time and effort, you manage to prepare a paper that summarizes your work and submit the paper to a refereed journal. Even though your study is seen as providing interesting research insights, the paper has a number of small problems that need to be addressed. Because of that, the review process involves several revisions and resubmissions, taking about two years to be completed. Your article is eventually published. You are very proud of your contribution, which sets the stage for years of future research and, possibly, your career. However, a year later you see another article, published in a different refereed journal, which is virtually a copy of yours. You immediately contact the author of the other article and accuse him of plagiarism. He, in turn, accuses you of plagiarizing his work-in-progress and getting it published before he had the opportunity to do so. He also threatens to sue you for defamation. This situation may sound too outrageous to be true. Yet it resembles in many ways a real case of plagiarism reported by Kock (1999) and is not unlike many other cases of plagiarism that go unreported because the victims realize that the costs involved in holding the plagiarists accountable for their actions may exceed available resources.
At this juncture, it is useful to define what we mean by plagiarism, since this will help focus the rest of our discussion. The following is a working definition, which may be improved as the debate about plagiarism continues. It follows closely from the definition provided by the Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson 2002).
The wrongful appropriation, purloining, publishing, expressing, or taking as one's own the thoughts, writings, inventions, or ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.
It is also important to clarify what we mean when we use the word victim in connection with plagiarism, since there are many potential victims. Certainly, the person whose work has been inappropriately copied, used, or misattributed is a direct victim of the plagiarism. However, we should recognize that key stakeholders such as journal editors and reviewers, as well as conference program chairs and conference reviewers, are also victims, since they have to spend their valuable time reviewing manuscripts and ideally identifying the fact that plagiarism has occurred, with all the consequent unpleasantness that may follow. Furthermore, the entire institution of original research--an institution premised on the basis of credit being due to those who deserve it through their original and creative work, and this includes all IS researchers--is likely to suffer if plagiarism occurs, as plagiarism is a form of affront to the institution and can undermine the values that most of the institution's stakeholders hold dear.
Given the various costs that may be imposed on the victims of plagiarism, we aim, among other things, to demonstrate that the creation of a community-backed group whose mandate involves the investigation and issuance of reports on cases of plagiarism is justified. The recent announcement by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) that it had decided to establish a standing committee on member misconduct (George et al. 2003; Munro 2002) is indicative of the importance of the issue. While this committee's mandate is broader in scope than that of one that focuses on plagiarism alone, given its remit to cover all academic instances of member misconduct, it nevertheless addresses directly and appropriately the need for a community-backed group to investigate and issue reports on cases of plagiarism. Indeed, given the role of AIS in promoting IS research, and given the fact that it has been argued that IS as a discipline is sufficiently well established for it to be a reference discipline for other disciplines (Baskerville and Myers 2002), it is appropriate that the IS discipline should have its own set of procedures for investigating acts of questionable conduct, including plagiarism, rather than needing to rely on the mechanisms established in other disciplines.
However, it is important to realize that the mere existence of an ethics committee is unlikely to be effective in terms of addressing the issue of plagiarism in the absence of other initiatives, some of which may be educational in nature. Moreover, it is important to realize that an ethics committee may create problems of its own, particularly if its mission is misunderstood by members of the IS community. This could occur if the committee has a mandate that is too broad and unfocused, or if the role of the committee is likened to that of a policeman or guardian of moral values. One of the key goals of this article is to spark a debate on the quintessential issues that relate to plagiarism. This debate should stimulate a wide range of concerned stakeholders in the IS community to consider the importance of ethical issues in general and plagiarism in particular, and so provide a source of information that will be of value to the AIS standing committee on member misconduct as it seeks input from around the world and then initiates the process of drafting a code of ethical practice that will apply to AIS members.
This article starts with a discussion of factors that can drive plagiarism. We then briefly present and discuss a real case of plagiarism that has been published elsewhere (Kock 1999). The case, which eventually involved several individuals and institutions, and that was largely "swept under the rug," illustrates the fact that, currently, IS researchers who are victims of plagiarism are likely to meet with systemic difficulties that obstruct support from public officials and the IS research community in their battle against the offenders. This is followed by a discussion of potential educational and enforcement measures that can be taken to prevent plagiarism. We conclude the article with a discussion of how a community-wide committee investigating plagiarism and other ethical issues may be perceived by members of the global IS community. We also examine the need for the committee to focus its attention on cases that fulfill a set of narrow criteria as a way of both gaining support from the IS research community and ensuring fairness in the way it conducts its work.
What May Motivate Some IS Researchers to Resort to Plagiarism?
It seems reasonable to assume that plagiarism, as a facet of human behavior, is a complex phenomenon. However, if we are to address this phenomenon and provide solutions to the problems it generates, then it is useful to identify a finite number of factors that seem to be associated with individuals committing plagiarism. While we depart from the assumption that correcting those factors will cause plagiarism to disappear, we must also be careful not to assume that correcting those factors in a narrow and somewhat deterministic way would be a desirable approach to deal with the problem. Even though some of those factors, particularly pressures to produce scholarly work, may lead some individuals to plagiarize, they may also have the beneficial effect of pushing other individuals into honestly achieving more than they would in the absence of those factors.
To be more specific, the factors that are likely to be associated with plagiarism can arguably be summarized into three main types: (1) informal and formal pressures on IS researchers to publish in a select group of outlets (mostly top-tier journals), which may lead some of them to resort to plagiarism; (2) limited knowledge about what level of idea-borrowing is acceptable, and the appropriate ways in which it should be conducted, and the consequences of plagiarism for both the plagiarist and the victim; and (3) systemic difficulties that hinder action against the perpetrators of plagiarism that create formidable obstacles for the victims of plagiarism to hold the perpetrators accountable for what they have done. These are discussed in more detail below.
Informal and Formal Pressures
Informally, IS researchers who are consistently able to publish in a select group of influential and highly regarded journals characterized by both a rigorous review process and high rejection rates are seen by their peers as being more successful, respectable, and influential than researchers who are unable to publish in those journals. Consequently, the ability of an IS researcher to write papers that will eventually be published in these select journals is to some extent correlated with the status of that researcher in the IS field. This situation is likely to exert a powerful pressure on many IS researchers, particularly those who have not yet published in these select journals and who also value the influence, respect, kudos, or simply the personal satisfaction that publishing there may bring. Some methods that could be employed to achieve this kind of publication are honest, for example, coauthoring an article with an experienced researcher. Other methods are clearly dishonest, such as plagiarizing previously published articles, resorting to some degree of data fabrication to reduce similarities, and hoping that reviewers will not notice the similarities that still exist.
Formally, IS research pressure is often associated with the process whereby all academics at research-oriented universities (and many more academics at universities that focus on both teaching and research) need to publish their work in high-quality journals as a means of ensuring that they gain some measure of permanence in their employment contract. In North America, this is formalized through the so-called tenure clock, with the implication that a certain number of publications need to be achieved within a certain time frame, usually around five years. In other parts of the world, the terminology differs and indeed the permanence of a contract may vary widely, but the pressure to publish is often essentially the same. The pressure can be considerable, since failure to publish may well result in termination of employment and the consequent upheaval associated with finding a new job, relocating one's family, etc.
Limited Knowledge about Acceptable Forms of Idea-Borrowing and Consequences of Plagiarism
Limited knowledge may also have an influence on whether someone commits plagiarism, particularly limited knowledge about (1) what level of idea-borrowing is acceptable and how this idea-borrowing should be conducted and (2) the consequences of plagiarism for both the plagiarist and the victim.
The history of scientific discovery suggests that it would be unreasonable to assume that all ideas should be completely original to be considered publishable. Consequently, the IS field should not be seen as an exception in this respect. The research process involves building on previous knowledge and adding new insights to that knowledge. This is a process that can seldom be accomplished without borrowing, developing, and extending ideas previously proposed by other researchers. However, knowing how to borrow ideas and present them with the proper attribution in a publication can be tricky. Generally speaking, it would probably be safe to say that text, diagrams, and other elements found in a document (whether it is published as a journal article or through other means, such as a working paper or Web site with an indication...
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