Abstract

Helping students understand where they should provide citations in research manuscripts is an essential aspect of training them in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. This Lesson comprises about 35 minutes of in-class work to help students learn how to avoid plagiarism. The Lesson is ideally integrated into a course in which a research report will be written. It introduces students to professional norms and explores the ethical “gray areas” surrounding the topic of citation. First, small student groups discuss case studies to reach a consensus on the question, “Is this plagiarism?” After a report-out to identify emergent themes, students then evaluate a paragraph from a published primary research manuscript and discuss why some sentences have citations and others do not. The choice of manuscript excerpt is flexible, based on teacher preferences and course subject area. This Lesson integrates critical instruction in research ethics that is applied to the science skill of communicating results. Student progress can be monitored using a summative homework-style assessment, in which students are tasked to determine which sentences in a paragraph should have citations and then to rank those sentences in order of how confident the group is that a citation is required. By the end of the Lesson, students have explored the definition of plagiarism and the ethical norms and processes for identifying when a citation is necessary.

Primary image: Text Duplication. Copying the work of others is plagiarism unless a proper citation is provided (copyright Joseph Ross).

Citation

Lesson Learning Goals

Lesson Learning Objectives

• LO1: evaluate whether authors of a scientific manuscript have provided appropriate citations to support their writing.
• LO2: use their knowledge of the ethical norms of plagiarism to explain their decisions whether to provide citation.

Introduction

Scientists at all career stages need training in the responsible and ethical conduct of research (RECR). There may be more than 2,300 annual instances of unethical research practices by individuals funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) alone (1). Combined with the relatively small number of institutional investigation reports that the DHHS Office of Research Integrity (ORI) receives per year, it has been noted that more RECR training is sorely needed (1). For example, the National Institutes of Health, which is part of DHHS, has long advocated for the importance of RECR training, stating that “Responsible conduct of research is an essential component of research training” and “Active involvement in the issues of responsible conduct of research should occur throughout a scientist’s career” (2).

Thus, identification of courses in which to integrate RECR instruction in the undergraduate curriculum is necessary. While typical laboratory courses are abundant, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) might be ideal avenues in which to combine research training and simultaneous training in RECR (3). However, proactive, intentional, and supportive RECR instruction at the undergraduate level is presently rare and poorly assessed (4), which provides an opportunity for improvement.

A plethora of RECR training topics could be taught in undergraduate courses. The present NIH guidelines list nine common topics: conflict of interest, human subjects and vertebrate animal protection, mentorship, collaboration, peer review, data management and ownership, research misconduct, authorship and publication, and the potential impacts of misconduct on society (2). Here, I focus on instruction to support one aspect of authorship and publication: plagiarism.

Ultimately, a good approach for preventing plagiarism is likely a holistic one, involving various forms of training (5, 6). Several approaches for teaching how to avoid plagiarism have been proposed, including: defining and discussing plagiarism, discussing hypothetical cases, and revising plagiarized passages (7). Such approaches are reflected in the body of existing resources, e.g., (8, 9). A working group of RECR experts agreed that instruction in plagiarism and proper citation is either “important” or “very important,” and 83% of the experts felt that it was important or very important that RECR trainees be able to reason critically using ethical principles. Seventy-eight percent agreed that it was important to identify institutional sources of RECR policies, and all experts agreed that it was important for trainees to consider the consequences of unethical conduct in research (1). This Lesson differs from existing resources for instruction in plagiarism that, for example, focus on issues related to paraphrasing (8) or use fictional scenarios (9). I designed this Lesson on plagiarism to use examples from published literature and cases that might routinely be encountered by students, which is an approach that has been suggested to improve the efficacy of research ethics instruction (10).

Development of this Lesson was supported by an ongoing effort to purposefully develop and improve instructional approaches for undergraduate instruction in RECR (11). I field-tested the Lesson in an upper-division biology laboratory CURE course that meets once per week for three hours. In this course, students spend approximately six weeks learning background information and practicing techniques in molecular genetics (e.g., PCR and agarose gel electrophoresis), cell biology (e.g., microscopy, tissue staining) and animal husbandry. At the same time, students also develop a hypothesis to test and then create an experimental design. Subsequently, student groups spend another six weeks performing their experiments and collecting and analyzing data before the final two weeks of the term, when oral and written project presentations are given.

In the first six weeks of instruction, I introduce a different RECR topic each week, in the following order: Protection of Human Subjects, Introduction to RECR (defining RECR and discussing the motivations and effects of unethical research), Plagiarism, Recordkeeping, Authorship, and Misconduct and Fraud (particularly data and image manipulation). Here, I describe the Lesson on the topic of plagiarism, which I purposefully introduced in the early weeks of this laboratory course, before students began drafting laboratory reports. In this class, students are assessed, in part, on a written laboratory report. Thus, students receive instruction not only on how to cite published work, but also to address the ethical “gray area” on how to identify whether any sentence requires a citation or not.

This one-day Lesson comprises students working in small groups to brainstorm a definition and examples of plagiarism and to discuss why plagiarism is considered unethical. Then each group is assigned a scenario and asked to decide whether it represents plagiarism and to create an explanation for their decision. The teacher then explains that each scenario describes a form of plagiarism, according to one university’s policy. This is followed by another exercise in which students are given a passage from a published research manuscript and asked to evaluate why some sentences, and not others, contain citations. The goal of this exercise is for students to understand that it is not always clear when a citation is needed, but that there are key attributes of a sentence that can signal the need for a citation. The Lesson concludes with a brief brainstorming session and discussion about why it is useful for scientists to provide appropriate citations. The overall goal is to help students to learn the ethical norms for citation, to understand that it isn’t always obvious where a citation is needed, and to recognize the value of citations.

Intended Audience

This Lesson has been implemented at a large, regional public university in an upper-division undergraduate laboratory course in genetics and cell biology. Because concepts of plagiarism span disciplines and are appropriate for instruction to all college students, the instructional approach presented here could be implemented with minimal revision in any course.

Required Learning Time

The instruction of this Lesson will require approximately 35 minutes during class. The Lesson comprises minimal direct instruction by the instructor interspersed with group discussions.

Prerequisite Student Knowledge

Ideally, students will be familiar with the organization of scientific research manuscripts (e.g. the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion structure), will have previously written laboratory research reports, and will have at least minimal experience in reading such manuscripts.

Prerequisite Teacher Knowledge

The instructor should have experience in teaching scientific writing; some resources are developed and summarized in (12). The instructor should also be familiar with the ethical norms and policies on plagiarism of their discipline and their institution. It is beneficial if the teacher is proficient in writing original scientific manuscripts, because this might provide a perspective allowing them to lead a class discussion about the potential uncertainties that exist when deciding whether a sentence requires a citation. For example, one common discussion topic concerns how an author might determine whether a statement contains information that is considered such common knowledge that it no longer requires a citation.

Scientific Teaching Themes

Active Learning

This Lesson leverages group discussion as the primary form of active learning. This form of instruction has been shown to improve academic success especially of underrepresented minorities (13) and to increase engagement and retention (14, 15).

Assessment

I measure student understanding using two assessments. After the class meeting in which the Lesson is presented, the students complete an assignment in which they read a paragraph lacking citations and then both identify and rank the sentences they think require citations (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments). They also provide written justifications for their ranking. An end-of-term final exam item also measures student understanding of an important concept related to plagiarism based on their qualitative, written response to a scenario (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments). These assessments are designed to evaluate achievement of the two student learning outcomes.

Inclusive Teaching

The Lesson is designed to be accessible to a variety of individuals, including those with vision loss, because the instruction is almost entirely text-based and image alt text tags are used where appropriate in the instructional materials. The use of small group discussion following large group report-outs gives both extroverts and introverts time to formulate a response before providing a well-reasoned response. The content of the Lesson is also broadly applicable to all students, especially in the context of a laboratory course, in which all students will produce research reports that should contain citations. For example, one study suggests that students may be more prone to plagiarism when writing in a language that is not their native language (16), and providing instruction in plagiarism might help address that issue (6).

Lesson Plan

I deliver this Lesson at the beginning of the laboratory course meeting in the third week of the academic term, using the presentation slides (S2. Plagiarism - Presentation). I project the slide file to the class and use the computer to record notes on the slides dedicated to brainstorming and to small groups reporting out (slides 2, 3, 6, and 9).

To prepare for the Lesson, the following should be prepared in advance. The teacher should have a computer connected to a projector. For in-person instruction, the teacher should also have two printouts of the five scenarios for group discussion (S3. Plagiarism - Scenarios). Each printout should be cut apart to generate five slips of paper, each containing one scenario. Students need no additional materials to participate. For online synchronous courses, students should be directed into breakout rooms and then provided their scenario digitally (e.g., by pasting the text into the chat, or by email). The activities for this Lesson are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Instruction on Plagiarism Lesson Timeline, including the corresponding slide number found in Supporting File S2. Plagiarism - Presentation.

I begin the discussion-focused Lesson by projecting the second slide (S2. Plagiarism - Presentation) and asking students to brainstorm a definition of plagiarism and to provide generic examples of situations that would be considered plagiarism. The point of this exercise is to contrast these initial thoughts with an extensive definition of plagiarism that they’ll later encounter. There are usually many aspects of plagiarism that students often don’t realize fall under that definition.

Next (slide 3), we briefly discuss the importance of avoiding plagiarism. I first ask students to provide potential reasons. This tends to elicit a practical and student-centric list of reasons, such as not getting into academic trouble. The following slide (4) is used to provide students an actual example, in which a Dean of a University committed oral plagiarism in a commencement speech he delivered. Once the plagiarism was noted, it had adverse consequences for this individual’s career. This is a useful vignette, because it highlights that anybody (even accomplished academics) can commit plagiarism, that it can have profound ramifications, and something else students don’t often realize: that plagiarism can occur orally, and that it is just as serious an infraction as written plagiarism.

Now, I task students with putting their existing knowledge to use, in an “Is this plagiarism?” activity. Ideally, students are divided into ten groups. Slide 5 is displayed so that everybody has access to the activity instructions. Each group is provided one slip of paper containing one of the five scenarios (S3. Plagiarism - Scenarios), so that each scenario has been given to two groups. The groups have five minutes in which to reach a consensus on the question, “Is this plagiarism?” The scenarios are:

1. Not providing a citation to the source that information was obtained from
2. Not having accessed (viewed or read) a reference that you cited
3. Re-using your own work (like from another class) without a citation
4. Being part of a group project in which you didn’t contribute
5. Not using quotation marks when providing a direct quotation from another source

At the end of five minutes, I reconvene the entire class, project slide 6, and ask one representative of each group, in turn, to first describe their scenario, then state their group’s consensus opinion (“yes it is plagiarism”, or “no it is not”), and finally briefly describe the group’s reasoning. With ten student groups, each scenario is provided to two groups so that independent decisions on each scenario occur. As groups report out, I tabulate the responses on slide 6 to identify whether each pair of groups comes to a broader consensus on what constitutes plagiarism. Because no instruction has yet been provided on plagiarism, the goal of this activity is for the entire class to be aware of their current collective understanding of plagiarism.

The next step, then, is to provide feedback based on institutional policy. At my university, we have an academic policy on cheating that incorporates a definition of plagiarism, along with examples. I display slide 7 to provide a hyperlink to this policy so that all students will be aware of the policy and have access to it, should they choose to read it after class. The policy makes it clear that all five of the scenarios are considered plagiarism. I then spend two minutes asking students to describe their reactions to this revelation. Students often express shock at learning that seemingly minor actions, especially “not having accessed a reference that you cited,” could get them into serious academic trouble.

We then address a component of plagiarism that I tell the students will be important for them to practice: how to identify where citations are required in their written research project reports. Even expert and accomplished scientists differ in opinion on whether particular sentences require a citation, usually because it is debatable whether factual content is widely enough known that a citation is no longer necessary (e.g., “DNA comprises four nucleotides: A, T, G and C” or “Covalent bonds are stronger than hydrogen bonds.”) Navigating this ethical “gray area” can be difficult, especially for novice scientists.

On slide 8, the students are asked to read two paragraphs from a published research article, and then I lead them through an analysis of which sentences have citations and which do not. In the first paragraph, each sentence has a citation. After asking students what these sentences have in common, a consensus is often reached that they all contain factual claims that must have come from some previous work. This is an accurate description of a best practice for identifying when a citation needs to be provided.

However, the second paragraph contains six sentences, but only a single citation. Almost every sentence contains factual information, so I ask students why these sentences did not merit citations. Generally, we conclude that the author must have thought that the information was widely enough known that a citation was not necessary. Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I underscore that each of these sentences could certainly have cited the publications that provide the supporting evidence. Furthermore, I emphasize the point that Sydney Brenner, the senior author of this manuscript (which isn’t perfect in its citation practices), later won a Nobel Prize. Thus, nobody is perfect in their practice of avoiding plagiarism, and I note to the students that we can all grow in our ability to provide proper citations.

Finally, I close by asking students to brainstorm on slide 9 why it might be valuable to put so much effort into providing citations. Students usually only identify that “it keeps them out of academic trouble,” so I often supplement their responses with the following motivations:

1. Citation is the polite thing to do. It is the “Golden Rule” of writing. Every scientist wants their work to be recognized, and we would hope that others would cite our research when they build upon it. Thus, it is appropriate that we extend the same courtesy to others. Likewise, not citing somebody else’s work can be perceived by them as a snub, whether intentional or not.

2. Providing citations is a signal that you are a good scientist: that you have diligently read the existing literature and are aware of what work has already been performed in your area of research.

3. The least common explanation for students to mention is perhaps the most fundamental reason to provide citations: they are most effectively used to provide external validation of our data interpretation. There is strength in numbers, and we can better justify our own potentially unpopular or unlikely claims when the independent work of others can be employed to support our conclusions.

The end of direct instruction involves assigning a homework exercise (slide 10) to allow students to apply their knowledge. A paragraph from a published research manuscript is provided (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments). The citations have been removed from the paragraph, and each sentence has been numbered. The students are asked to create two groups of sentences: one group of the sentences that require citations, and another group that does not. Then, for each group, students rank the sentences according to how sure they are that the sentence requires a citation. Each student then provides a written justification for the sentence they are most sure requires a citation and a justification for the sentence they’re most sure does not require a citation.

In class the following week, I spend a few minutes at the start of class discussing the assignment results with the class and providing feedback on their work (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments). I conclude by mentioning that, in the actual publication, all the sentences contained a citation. To my surprise, no student has ever responded that every sentence requires a citation, even though this is the best answer. I use a few more minutes to discuss why each sentence requires a citation. This provides a good summary for the learning experience.

At the end of the academic term, I incorporate a single plagiarism-related question into the final exam for the class (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments).

Teaching Discussion

Student Assessment and Feedback

Students appreciated taking time to directly address the topic of plagiarism in the context of a laboratory course. On a post-course survey, I asked “What (if anything) is the most important thing that you learned about scientific research ethics and the responsible conduct of research, for the first time, in this class?” Although the majority of students responded that learning about the topic of misconduct and fraud was most important to them, the second most frequent RECR topic mentioned (of the six topics covered in the course) was plagiarism. For example, one student responded, “the most important thing that I learned was that you have to read the entire paper before you can actually use [cite] it for your own paper.” I interpret the qualitative student responses to indicate that students aren’t generally familiar with the multiple forms of plagiarism that exist beyond “not providing a citation,” making instruction in the ethics of research writing and plagiarism a clear target for improvement.

The homework assignment in this Lesson produced insightful data. As mentioned earlier, a clear theme for why students felt unsure about whether a sentence required a citation was uncertainty about whether the content was common enough knowledge not to need a reference. Thus, another potentially useful subject for future instruction is to expand on the discussion of that ethical “gray area” with students.

Students provided strong responses to a summative assessment question to describe whether it is ethically appropriate to cite a source that they have not personally accessed. Students demonstrated good understanding of the plagiarism policy, with 93% indicating that doing so is fraudulent, because doing so could possibly cause an author to misrepresent data and conclusions from the reference if they hadn’t first read it.

Lesson Adaptation and Extension

A strength of this Lesson is that it addresses a topic fundamental to very many courses, where students are asked to produce scholarly writing. Thus, there are useful ways to alter the Lesson. First, I encourage teachers to provide their students with their own institution’s plagiarism policy, when one is available. This is accomplished simply by changing the URL on slide 7 (S2. Plagiarism - Presentation). If it isn’t clear that such a policy exists, it might help to contact the Dean of Students or an administrator in Faculty Affairs. Plagiarism policies are also often incorporated into policies on Academic Dishonesty (cheating).

A great way to customize this Lesson is to replace the case study examples with any that are more pertinent to the course content. The provided examples, like the example passage evaluated during class (S2. Plagiarism - Presentation, slide 8) and the Post-Instruction Homework Assignment (S1. Plagiarism - Assessments), are based on published genetic literature on the worm species Caenorhabditis elegans. This Lesson was field-tested in a genetics and cell biology course where we use C. elegans as a study species that is easy for students to work with as they develop and test their own hypotheses. These excerpts from published literature can easily be replaced with examples from literature more appropriate for a different course. I prefer to use example paragraphs taken from the beginning of the introduction section of any manuscript, because those tend to contain a good mixture of background information that is common knowledge in the field (and thus often uncited) and information that is more specific or recent and that contains citations.

A valuable extension of this lesson would involve providing students with iterative feedback on drafts of research reports throughout the course. By helping them identify passages that do or do not require citation, students might develop a better understanding of how to navigate the nebulous norms for when factual information no longer requires a citation.

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

• S1. Plagiarism - Assessments
• S2. Plagiarism - Presentation
• S3. Plagiarism - Scenarios

Acknowledgments

Human subjects research was approved the California State University, Fresno Institutional Review Board using the expedited review process. This work was partly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF DBI-1919312). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. I thank C. Meyer and J. Bush for their ongoing support in the instruction of CUREs and in RECR training, J. Olimpo and the ENCOUR leadership team and cohort, including S. Johnson and P. Mabrouk, for their feedback and encouragement, and S. Kendoyan and M. Schreiber for their leadership in laboratory course instruction.

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