On Plagiarism and Plagiarists

Features

By Subhasis Chattopadhyay –

Reviewing books for over a decade has given me valuable insights about plagiarists and plagiarism. More often than not, people fudge data, copy and paste from books not yet digitised for they cannot keep to deadlines. And original ideas are in short supply in this world of inane publish or perish.

So what needs to be cited? The point here is to cite all sources and not be bogged down by the method of citation. This is the golden rule: one cites absolutely everything which is not from one’s own brain. The citation methods might be different for different disciplines, but one has to cite each of the following:

  1. Telephonic conversations which include WhatsApp Calls, Google Duo calls, and so many other ways of momentary communications. For instance, this author once told someone about his deceased teacher shining like a star to countless students in the faraway skies. This was when he was recovering from a leg-fracture in 2015. I had quoted the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures). Yet, when this was published in a national daily and neither the Old Testament nor this author was mentioned; I felt betrayed by this senior academic. So, even if one cannot remember the source, then it is always proper to mention that the idea is not one’s own, but one has forgotten how one came by it. As an illustration, I want to keep the senior academician’s name concealed. That has been successfully done. But I resent this capturing of my own idea taken from the Bible and passed off as someone else’s insight. So, when in doubt, just honestly write: probably this is not your own idea. One can add that while watching something on YouTube, you got this or that idea. While listening to some or the other now discontinued podcast, you got that other idea. Never pass off as your own, what is not actually your own idea. This is known as academic integrity. Emails are to be cited with date and due credit given to the correspondent (s).
  2. You may think that nobody actually bothers to check whether you have used an electronic version of a book or, a hardback version. For your information, some of us take the trouble to not only Google for answers but actually bring down a book from an old shelf and check whether one passes off that which is from an e-format book as one that is from a hardcopy. One often wonders that in April 2021, whoever is writing whatever, will hardly be able to go to libraries and bring out a copy of a good journal. All journals worth their names are now online and the old ones are nearly all digitised. Yet when they write their papers and quote an earlier issue of some or the other journal, they might be tempted to write that this or that essay was written by so and so on page something in volume such. Well give that data if you want to; but also add that you got this particular essay from either PhilPapers or from academia.edu. For if you are in India today and writing whatever you are writing, on 18th of April, 2021, chances are your library is closed due to the necessary pan India Covid 19 control measures due to the ongoing pandemic. Please do not underestimate the power of the reader in say, 2030 to ferret out this delicate fact.
  3. Why lie? For instance, while researching American Westerns and horror novels, I have used online interviews of American scholars long dead. I did not really go to America because there is now hardly any need to do so since most academic materials are available online. As a thumb rule, remember, what is behind paywalls, may not be worth academic scrutiny because serious scholars make an effort to make knowledge free and even edit Wikipedia articles in their domains. So, unless one is antiquated, then most of the research in philosophy and the humanities can now be done sitting at home. So, recently, I prepared class notes, made open access, on Ian McEwan’s Atonement. There I quoted from a novel of Thomas Hardy’s which I was then reading on my e-book reader. So I cited Hardy and the relevant passage but did not forget to add that this passage was culled from an e-book read on a Kindle. One cannot possibly give page numbers to books whose pagination changes with font-control. So, remember that you stand on the shoulder of giants when you show off your individual talent. To illustrate further; I need not cite ‘standing on the shoulder of giants’ for it is just too well known across disciplines. A web-search provides me with the relevant Wikipedia source at 21:54 hours, Indian Standard Time, on 18th April, 2021. But I certainly need to credit T.S. Eliot when I write of ‘showing off one’s individual talent’. I take the phrase from a memorable essay by Eliot. Even without giving the exact source, I escape charges of plagiarism; though, in an academic setting, this is shoddy scholarship. But we are not dealing with issues of scholarship here but with issues regarding plagiarism.
  4. One has to understand that some material is copyright in one country and not within copyright in another. Post COVID-19, if there is such a time ever, then one supposes that more and more material will be made out of copyright and made available in the public domain. So cite at least the web page and accession time and the date. Then add that you are using probably copyrighted material and append something to the effect that you are using it fairly. Fair usage is also part of open access policies and stating that you do not have the explicit copyright of reprinting something, shows you are an ethical and sincere scholar. One can use online tools to cache Tweets and even forum threads and then cite those.
  5. I have always taken the greatest joy and learnt a lot from reading footnotes, endnotes and even the indexes of books sent my way for review. I know that everything is easily formatted now through freely available software. Still, short of citing a pastry, I also know when an author has not read a book and just mentioned it for appearing learned in one or the other of her footnotes. John Caputo (b.1940), that philosopher turned theologian in his book, Truth: Philosophy in Transit (2014) says how easy it is to copy-paste, but how difficult it is now to sift through hundreds of pages of nonsense for that one line of sense. At least, Caputo says this in some form at the beginning of his book which being a bibliophile I have both as softcopy and as a paperback. But none can charge me with plagiarism since I have mentioned Caputo. We will let it rest that I am too lazy to get up from my chair while typing this to find out the page numbers in both formats, their cities of publications and editions. Others can sleuth those out. The point I wanted to make is that I got the idea of writing about copy-paste hack jobs from Caputo. Further, it is from Caputo I have got the idea that research now is all the more exacting because everything is either online or is going to be online. But it is better to give footnotes to anything you think is not your own but as Rudyard Kipling once said, don’t be too wise (smart). Don’t mention that you have read Peter Gay on Romanticism without really reading his book on the Romantic philosophers. You will be caught sooner than later; that you just looked up the entry on Peter Gay online and mentioned him in one of your notes to appear learned. You might have mixed up your Blake with Gay’s Novalis. It is like mentioning either the Bible or the Mahabharata or Shakespeare without reading them. Just so that your paper/book/blog-post falsely scintillates do not mention anything which you do not have the patience to read in the non-existent future spent meaninglessly scrolling through social media. Do not hyperlink for the sake of getting referrals in blog posts; see whether what you are linking has any relevance to your context as a writer. Not to do so, is not only in bad form, but is also unethical.

So there we go, we can fool others for some of the time; but eventually either algorithms or a conscientious reader will catch you and then no matter, what you say, none will listen. Use the internet, including Wikis; whether you have the ability to sift through the material is your business. But do cite all your tangible and intangible sources. It is better to write truthfully and simply than to use blah, floss and gobbledygook.

Illustrations of plagiarism:

  • The Sabbath is a time for renewal and is revolutionary in nature.

Should read,

The Sabbath is a time for renewal and is revolutionary in nature as shown by Walter Brueggemann in his Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (2014).

  • Religious studies is fraught with tensions because it has to engage with the insider and outsider problems.

Can at least be reframed like this, since this is a very common problem yet not original to anyone. It is a dispersed idea:

Religious studies is fraught with tensions because it has to engage with the insider and outsider problems as innumerable scholars have pointed out before. The problem is so pervasive within religious studies that this is a cliché now.

Subhasis Chattopadhyay started his teaching career at St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, then affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He was interviewed by The Statesman about his record scores during his BA in English. He went on to earn a First Masters in English from the University of Calcutta where later he researched on the relationship between theodicy and the works of Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King read synoptically. His reviews from 2010- to date in the Ramakrishna Mission’s mouthpiece, the century old Prabuddha Bharata have won him many accolades. He is not associated with the Ramakrishna Mission in any way and hence, there is no question of any conflict of interest. Most of his reviews have been showcased by Ivy League Presses. He earned his Biblical Studies and separately, Formative Spirituality qualifications through flawless research from the Pontifical Athenaeum, Bengaluru. His studies in Hinduism from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies were done summa cum laude. He also earned further qualifications in the behavorial sciences. He now reviews books for this website and annotates the Bible here. His blogging career began with Instamedia run from Shimla. For three consecutive years, nearly every week he contributed to The Herald, published from Calcutta. The Herald is the mouthpiece of the Archdiocese of Calcutta. In 2017 he was one of the chief judges at an international literary festival held in the Himalayas. He is now writing his own books apart from teaching at the PG and UG department of English at a non-community college affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He is a recluse and a bibliophile.