On Plagiarism

Scott Jaschik:

In 2003, the American Historical Association got out of the business of adjudicating complaints of plagiarism, saying that the association could best promote good scholarship by issuing standards and promoting education about them. Journals, other publishers and colleges and universities are better suited than an association to consider plagiarism complaints, the AHA said, and they all have various sanctions they can impose.

The move was controversial within the association, in part because it came at a time of several well publicized incidents of alleged plagiarism in the profession.

The association has just released an analysis on how plagiarism is handled by journals in the discipline and the answer appears to be that editors favor ad hoc approaches over policy.

“Very few journals have written plagiarism policies, and many journals are reluctant to develop them,” said the study, which was published in the AHA’s magazine, Perspectives. At the same time, the study found that 9 of the 35 history journals participating in the survey reported dealing with plagiarism accusations at least once.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 24, 2007 12:00 AM
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