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Case 2c :

Plagiarism—Duplicate Publication or Reasonable Replication in a Foreign Language?

Angelica and her colleague, Ren, are frustrated. Their supervisor has given them the biggest pile of "busy work" to do over this summer. They have to index all of his publications so he can submit a dossier for some big award instead of working on their research!

The two students feel unfairly picked for this task too. Angelica can read and write in French and Ren got extraordinary marks on his A levels in Chinese many years ago and he can read Japanese too. They are an excellent pair, their supervisor says, to catalogue his publications, which are in at least 5 languages.

The two colleagues have spent a week apart, trudging through the 12 binders of printed publications, indexing the work according to the codebook their supervisor gave them. When they met in the tea room this morning, both were uneasy around the other as if each is keeping secrets. Later that evening, Angelica finally broke the ice:

"Ren", she asked, "are there a lot of pieces that are similar in every way, except for the journal they are published in or the language of the article, in your binders?"

Ren took his head out of his hands and looked at Angelica, pointing at his binders with an orange highlighter and a ruler:

"Yes, I found so many similarities that I started to highlight them all. I am very surprised. It seems our supervisor has published the same piece sometimes three times, as a book chapter, as an English publication and, so far as I can see, as a Chinese or Japanese publication. It is strange though, I do not remember that he speaks Japanese. If he did, why do I have to watch all of the Japanese electronics journals for him?"

Angelica sat down with a sigh and said,

"I will go back to my binders and start making highlights like you have. I have found the same publication in French and Italian, but also the same graphs in a number of English papers. I did not find a citation for the earliest version of the graph in the later papers, but these were published in 1972 to 1978. Maybe they didn't have to cite things then…".

Ren replied,

"I don't think that was the case, but who do we tell and what do we tell them? That our supervisor publishes the same pieces in multiple languages? It will ruin his chances for this award."

With another deep sigh, Angelica responds,

"Well, now that we know this, what do we do with this information?"

• What are the problems that Ren and Angelica face?
• What is the problem that Ren and Angelica should address first?
   

Imagine you are Ren and Angelica:

• What should you do now?
• To whom should you reveal your findings?
• When should you speak to your supervisor?
• If you speak to your supervisor, how might you explain what you believe to be the problem?
• Are there other individuals you believe you should speak to about this case?
• What should Ren and Angelica be concerned about as students?