In recent times, plagiarism accusations have started to become a weapon against people who pass on other people’s thoughts, ideas, and creative insights as their own.

Many of the accusations spiked with the incident of Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, stepping down from her position as many critics found objective evidence of plagiarism in her work. Furthermore, she faced backlash because of her statement on antisemitism at Harvard. Renowned business magazine “Business Insider” published allegations of plagiarism against another Harvard donor’s spouse, a former professor at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). After the accusations came about, the Harvard donor declared that he would launch his own plagiarism investigation mission to investigate every faculty member, administrative body and director of MIT.

Among all of this chaos, only a few people seem to genuinely care about the cause in terms of its long-lasting implications. But a handful of people act as if they have legitimate concerns about plagiarism’s harmfulness or that plagiarism is not an issue to ponder—whatever and whenever it serves their political agenda.

Many readers may ask why plagiarism is such a big issue and what all the fuss is about. To answer these questions, we must go back to the basic definition of plagiarism and how it works.

What does plagiarism mean?

In layman’s terms, plagiarism is the practice of stealing another person’s ideas, words, or work without giving them credit for it and passing it off as their own.

Most people in academic fields would agree that it is straightforward plagiarism to copy and paste another person’s work and just stick your name to it. But there is a catch: what would we term it if the phrases used are cliches, and what if they are just standard definitions from Wikipedia or some other informative website? Should it also be classified as plagiarism? And if we go further and talk about phrases or words, software codings or prompts? It’s a complex and contradictory situation.

Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton, a professor and writer who strongly advocates academic integrity, writes, “We all think we are talking about the same thing when we say the word ‘plagiarism,’ but that is not the case.” From her years of research, she has found that there is no singular or universally accepted definition of plagiarism.

The diverse conventions found in the various academic disciplines account for one of the largest differences in how people discuss plagiarism. Following the release of her book My Word in 2009, Blum claims that researchers in quantitative fields such as engineering would constantly inform her that substantial portions of literature reviews were plagiarised. Within these fields, the significance of one’s research held greater weight than the creativity of their descriptions of other people’s findings.

Weaponisation of Plagiarism

When plagiarism investigations are conducted post-graduation, they are less about student success and more about discrediting and causing harm to the individual. Whenever a plagiarism investigation occurs, it is most likely a search-and-destroy mission.

As Bill Ackman has lately pointed out, even if accusations of plagiarism might be disguised as righteousness, someone with the means and commitment can push plagiarism investigations to unprecedented heights. If Ackman continues, it may mean that every professor and university president in the US and internationally will have their academic records from college examined more closely than they have ever been.

Integration of Technology Made Plagiarism Accusations Easier

Recently, plagiarism accusations have been easier to come by because of the rise of AI technology. With the help of these technologies, different kinds of plagiarism detectors are regularly used. These plagiarism detectors can read through millions and millions of texts and compare them to the existing work of academics and professionals. The biggest irony is that the commands and languages used to build these AI plagiarism detectors could be considered plagiarism themselves.

It is no longer a secret that Open AI’s ChatGPT training included pirated texts. Many renowned authors, including George R.R. Martin, have sued Open AI for copyright infringement, and the New York Times sued Open AI, stating that ChatGPT is responsible for unlawful copying of the Times’s invaluable works. If we go back a few years, in 2007, a group of students also sued the primary plagiarism detector, Turnitin, accusing the detector of plagiarising their work. The integration of these new technologies sure makes it harder to cope with and makes us think whether it is plagiarism or not. It is taking us into an unpredictable new era, but it can be said that this is the future of academia, and we must embrace it.

The difference between professional plagiarism and student plagiarism

It may not be a topic of great debate, but it is evident that students are in their learning phase and are expected to require more support than others. As educators and academics, it is the professors’  moral responsibility to ensure students have every opportunity to learn. Myriads of research show that first-year students are more likely to cheat than those in their senior years as they are new to concepts like citing, referencing and many other research writing terms; they need supervision and training programs to support them until they succeed in learning those terms. This process is followed so that the students become qualified in their chosen fields after completing their academic courses.

Therefore, we hold professors and academic administrators to higher academic standards than students. Professors have already created a foundation of learning in their field of studies, grasped the fundamentals of their respective fields of expertise, and held a certain level of research integrity. It can be said that by the time an individual becomes a professor, he ought to know better the functions and integrity of research work.

Retroactive Plagiarism Allegations and Investigations

An attempt to discredit someone in their current job frequently results from a retrospective study of their academic work as a student. After something happens, assigning blame is rarely beneficial. The educational institution must address claims of academic misconduct by students. Not doing so speaks ill of the school and the student (or graduate) accused of misconduct. In many instances, academic wrongdoing discovered long after graduation has resulted in universities revoking degrees after graduation.

It is not being suggested that post-graduation plagiarism cases or any other forms of academic misconduct should be ignored or that no one should bat an eye on them. The idea is that if an accusation of such misconduct is not brought to attention until the accused individual has completed graduation, the opportunity to learn has already been lost. The individual who has been targeted for misconduct accusations will face severe consequences because of the scrutiny of his work.

The Role of Graduate Supervisors

In most of these cases, the accusations primarily focused on the graduate thesis of the individuals accused of plagiarism. But a question must come to mind while investigating these cases: What did the academic supervisors of these dissertations do? And why is no one pointing their fingers at them, too? Was it not their responsibility to thoroughly check these thesis papers? A lot of these questions remain unanswered.

PhD theses are not merely published online for public access without any review. In addition to several rounds of reviews and modifications, there is a thorough evaluation at the end. Any credible university will have academics with relevant experience review the thesis on paper, orally during the defence, or both. The work is approved by the graduate supervisor as well as others. A thesis’s signature page may occasionally be included on the front page before it is preserved in the public domain. The signatures of the supervisor and examiner publicly attest to the approval of a thesis.

If we are talking about facts, each and every person who signs off on a graduate student’s thesis paper bears responsibility for the quality of that paper. It is not being said that students should be excused of their moral responsibilities; rather, the academic community as a whole bears as much responsibility for student plagiarism as does the individual student.