Eisner Caroline - Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism

1. 
   Caroline Eisner and Martha Vicinus
2. 
   Jessica Litman
3. 
   Gilbert S. Omenn
4. 
   Amit Ray and Erhardt Graeff
5. 
   Gordon Kane
6. 
   Anne Berggren
7. 
   Jeff Ward
8. 
   Anis Bawarshi
9. 
   Christiane Donahue
10. 
    Amy England Page viii
11. 
    Christina Pugh
12. 
    Christopher M. Kuipers
13. 
    Kim Walden and Alan Peacock
14. 
    Martine Courant Rife
15. 
    Michael Grossberg
16. 
    Laura J. Murray
17. 
    Lisa Emerson
18. 
    Stefan Senders
19. 
    Lynn Z. Bloom
20. 
    Joel Bloch
21. 
    Linda Adler-Kassner, Chris M. Anson, and Rebecca Moore Howard

Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism: Teaching Writing in the Age of the Internet

Caroline Eisner and Martha Vicinus

Across university and college campuses, writing centers face questions about plagiarism. All too often these queries are framed in narrow, judgmental terms that leave little room for either the teacher or the student to understand the complexities of permission, attribution, and copyright. Teachers find themselves placed in an adversarial position in relation to students, as if all writing assignments involved the risk of plagiarism. This collection of essays addresses not only such immediate problems, but also a larger, more central, argument that academic integrity goes beyond the classroom and that any discussion of plagiarism must involve the current questions regarding fair use and copyright. It is no accident that public debates about plagiarism have coincided with efforts to limit access to copyrighted material. On the one hand, we face the exponential increase in readily available information from the Web, and, on the other, threats of property-rights litigation and increasingly limited access to this material. Adding to the mix, postmodern literary theory reminds us that nothing is wholly originalthat we depend on remixing and reusing the past, adding to or remaking old plots, insights, and ideas. Across disciplines and fields, we find that plagiarism is not a simple wrong; a full understanding of its role in contemporary intellectual life depends on a broad approach that includes notions of what is original and what role imitation plays in the creation of new texts. As numerous contributors remind us, at no time has copyright law guaranteed complete control over an individual work.

Within the university we rightly have a profound investment in responsible, independent, intellectual work, lest we undermine the very nature of our profession. Both students and researchers can be tempted to Page 2 short-circuit, via unacknowledged use of others' work, the necessary groundwork in learning; most of those who succumb do not get caught. In the past, before the Web, probably even fewer were caught. Stealing or buying the work of others, however, undermines the credibility of the written word and damages the open and free exchange of ideas. In the past few years, we have witnessed a rash of high-profile plagiarism cases, ranging from a Harvard undergraduate's plagiarized novel to fabrication of evidence in the biomedical field. How do we conserve and inculcate a tradition of ethical research and writing standards, while acknowledging and taking full advantage of the opportunities provided by new technologies? How can students be taught to evaluate sources and then to credit the authors appropriately? Why have so many experienced researchers been found guilty of stealing from others?

The essays selected for this anthology address these and other questions from different points of view. For, as its table of contents reveals, issues of authorial authority and control over writing cut across every area of study. We have organized the essays to highlight the ways in which experts across many fields, ranging from the fine arts to physics, are grappling with these issues. However different the starting point, each author shares a concern about the increasingly angry public debate for or against file sharing, fair use, and plagiarism. We have organized the essays to speak to each other about this issue, as well as about shared pedagogical concerns. We hope that both novice and experienced teachers will learn from the practical and concrete suggestions about how to fashion unique assignments, to teach about proper attribution, and to increase students' involvement in their own writing. At its core, this is an anthology for anyone interested in the process of learning. How can we encourage the free and ethical exchange of ideas? How can we encourage students, so accustomed to digital sharing, to understand citation practices, free use, and the legitimate ownership of ideas? These seemingly local concerns are nevertheless also implicated in larger national issues because access to and use of trustworthy information and writing are, of course, fundamental to public discourse in a democratic society.

Many of the authors included here allude to the groundbreaking work of Rebecca Moore Howard, who first suggested the importance of patch writing for learners confronted with massive amounts of new information. She argues that students frequently quote without citation material that they are still mastering, or may not understand, as an initial step in their learning process. The reasons for such lapses are not easy to come by: Page 3 students may fail to acknowledge their sources because of a failure in teaching the rules; because it is easy to forget who said what when sifting through many different sources; or because they come from countries in which quoting without citing an expert is a way of acknowledging the greatness of the expert's ideas. It may also be that intertexuality is simply fundamental to their knowledge base. Attribution seems artificial in a world saturated with references to familiar songs and popular culture. In her essay, Amy England points to yet another complication: what may be common knowledge to academics is rarely so for studentsand vice versa. Joel Bloch and Lisa Emerson highlight the contextual nature of knowledge and the difficult cultural leaps international students must make to understand what is considered common knowledge within the context of a particular discipline.