Avoiding plagiarism,
self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical
writing
Paraphrasing/Plagiarism Exercise
Earlier, when we covered
paraphrasing and plagiarism, we offered various examples of properly
paraphrased and plagiarized text.
Because inappropriate paraphrasing appears to be one of the most common
forms of plagiarism it is important that contributors to the scientific
literature become sensitive to this problem and integrate proper paraphrasing
practices in their writing. To that
effect, an exercise has been developed for the purpose of offering instruction
on acceptable paraphrasing strategies.
For this exercise, the reader is asked to imagine the following scenario: You are working on a manuscript in which you review published studies on the colony raiding behavior of fire ants, S. invicta. In one of the journal articles that you are reading for your review there is a short paragraph that you deem very important and thus, you decide that you want to include the information in your manuscript. Here is the paragraph:
This study
examines whether workers of S. invicta are able to
assist their
mothers in colony usurpations. First we
tested
whether
[queens] of S. invicta are better able to usurp colonies to
which their
daughters have moved. Second, we tested
whether
the effect
of daughters on usurpation success is due to familiarity
with the
queen or to genetic relatedness.
Aggressive behavior
during
these usurpation attempts was observed to determine if the
presence of
familiar or related workers influenced the aggressive
response
toward either the resident queen or the queen attempting
usurpation.¹
.¹Balas
M, Adams ES, 1996.Intraspecific usurpation of incipient fire ant colonies. Behav Ecol 8:99-103.
You could copy the above paragraph
verbatim, enclose it in quotation marks, and include it in your manuscript, but
as is generally known in the biomedical sciences, the use of quoted text, a
fairly common practice in certain disciplines within the humanities, is
typically shunned by most authors and editors of biomedical journals. Another
option would be for you to summarize the important points of the above
paragraph by condensing it into one or two shorter sentences that fully capture
the essence of the ideas being conveyed.
However, let’s assume that your intention is to paraphrase the entire
paragraph thereby preserving all of the information contained in the
paragraph. How would you paraphrase the
paragraph without committing plagiarism and in a manner that is consistent with
the principles of ethical writing?
For
the first part of this exercise, please paraphrase the above paragraph to the
best of your ability. Take your time
and use whatever resources you deem necessary (e.g., dictionary,
thesaurus). Before commencing, keep in
mind that when paraphrasing you must substantially modify the original text
while preserving the exact meaning of the ideas conveyed in the original
paragraph. You should note that when
faced with the task of paraphrasing text, many individuals often complain that
the reason their paraphrases are too close to the original is because there are
only a limited number of ways that one can express the same thought. Although this may be true to some extent
when the original text is comprised of highly technical language, such as the
paragraph on mammalian histone lysine
methyltransferase used earlier in our discussion of plagiarism, it is not true
for most other writing. It is certainly
not true for the sample paragraph on fire ants that we have selected.
You should also remember that your paraphrase must also indicate the source of the original material. This is typically done with either a footnote or with some form of parenthetical notation indicating the source of the original. For example, in the style suggested by the American Psychological Association, you might insert the following at the end of your paraphrase: (Balas and Adams, 1996). For this exercise, please assume that your paraphrase contains the proper reference notation indicating the source of the material. You should also assume that a full citation has been placed in the reference section of your paper.
