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International Journal of Research & Method in Education

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Will the real author come forward? Questions of ethics, plagiarism, theft
and collusion in academic research writing
Pat Sikes

To cite this Article Sikes, Pat(2009) 'Will the real author come forward? Questions of ethics, plagiarism, theft and collusion

in academic research writing', International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 32: 1, 13 24
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17437270902749247
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International Journal of Research & Method in Education

Vol. 32, No. 1, April 2009, 1324

Will the real author come forward? Questions of ethics, plagiarism,

theft and collusion in academic research writing
Pat Sikes*
School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
(Received March 2008; final version received December 2008)
Taylor and Francis
CWSE_A_375094.sgm

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International
10.1080/17437270902749247
1743-727X
Original
Taylor
102009
32
Professor
p.j.sikes@sheffield.ac.uk
000002009
&Article
Francis
PatSikes
(print)/1743-7288
Journal of Research
(online)
and Method in Education

This paper raises some questions about academic authorial honesty under the
headings of Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), Theft, and Collusion.
Compared with the medical sciences, the social sciences in general and education
specifically, lag behind in terms of critical attention being paid to the problem of
plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics. The ubiquity of
the Internet, the ever intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a
general shift in perceptions of what constitutes bad plagiarism and collusion
which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean
that the time may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal
editors of how they regard and deal with the whole area. This paper makes an early
contribution to the discussion.
Keywords: research ethics; plagiarism; academic writing; authorial honesty; peer
review

Do you trust me? OR Should you trust me? OR What this paper is about
Do you know who wrote this paper? How do you know? Well, the name of the author
my name is an obvious clue. How important is it to you to know that I, Pat Sikes,
wrote this piece? The people who reviewed it didnt know and they, and I, would probably have felt compromised if they had. Within academia we do tend to take the existence
and the value of anonymous peer reviewing with all of its acknowledged faults for
granted (Macnab and Thomas 2007). However, as Richard Smith writing in the British
Medical Journal, has pointed out, this is a practice based on custom not evidence (1999,
4) and not that long a custom either, since research suggests that reviewing in general
and anonymous reviewing in particular only began to be used in a systematic fashion
around the time of the Second World War (Brock and Meadows 1998; Madden 2000).
Even so, although there are a few journals which dont use anonymity on the grounds
that transparency can lead to greater honesty and better, more critically constructive
reviews, the majority do on the basis of the belief that it best produces those outcomes.
Questions of the desirability of anonymity in reviewing aside, when the name of
an author is given, I assume that that person has written the text its affixed to. Even
if/when I am familiar with someones work and then read a piece which is markedly
out of character, I dont tend to question that they wrote it. I just think well, thats a
surprise, what a change from their usual stuff. An informal survey undertaken in the
*Email: p.j.sikes@sheffield.ac.uk
ISSN 1743-727X print/ISSN 1743-7288 online
2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17437270902749247
http://www.informaworld.com

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14

P. Sikes

common room of my institution reveals that most people share my position. But are
we right to always be so trusting?
In this paper, I want to raise some difficult and uncomfortable questions about
academic authorial honesty (airing potentially dirty linen maybe?). The impetus for
writing it came from my experience of anonymously peer reviewing a paper that
considered writing styles and which highlighted major stylistic discrepancies in a
particular book. I knew a story about this text which cast doubts on it being a sole
authored work, although authorship was attributed to only one person, and that got me
to thinking more broadly about other matters. Thus, what follows is primarily
intended as a provocative think piece for me as writer and for you as reader. What
I have to say isnt based on systematic research but rather draws on numerous conversations with fellow academics as well as on close to 30 years of personal experience
of working in universities. Indeed, given the sub rosa nature of the subject matter, it
is difficult to gain hard evidence about the extent or the specific nature of the sorts of
incidents I will describe. I am confident, nonetheless, that readers with similar backgrounds to mine will recognize what I am talking about.
So, here, I am going to look at some related issues under the headings of Plagiarism,
Theft and Collusion, before going on to raise some general questions about ethics and
academic research writing. My particular interest and focus is on research in the field of
education but, owing to the paucity of literature dealing with these topics in this area, I
will be drawing on references from other disciplines and particularly from medicine.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is passing off others work, words or ideas as ones own by failing to
attribute them to their creator/originator and it is, perhaps, the commonest type of
authorial offence. Although it can occur accidentally or because of negligence or
misunderstanding of citation conventions, dictionaries generally define plagiarism in
negative terms, using words such as unacceptable, unauthorized, theft and crime and
even if it is not explicitly stated, there seems to be an assumption that the appropriation is deliberately and consciously fraudulent and is intended to deceive. Intention is
generally not easy to prove but, nevertheless and in this paper, my concern is with
instances of plagiarism where the person who does not acknowledge original sources
knows full well what they are doing and aims to mislead readers into thinking the
work is all their own. I am not, therefore, talking about the sorts of creative borrowing,
collaging and re-mixing that, as Jonathan Lethem (2007) points out, have played a
crucial and enriching role in music, literature and the arts in general. Nor am I referring to the ways in which researchers and academics build on extant knowledge to
develop new understandings. No. Im talking about the active use of unfair means in
order to achieve an outcome. This could also be described as cheating.
In this section, I am going to consider plagiarism and students; plagiarism and
academics; and also, what is often described as self-plagiarism, which is different in
that it doesnt involve another persons words and work but which can, nonetheless,
be undertaken for similar fraudulent purposes.
Plagiarism and students
It may seem slightly odd to give attention to students here when my primary focus is
on academic publications but the reason why Im doing so is that students are major

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International Journal of Research & Method in Education

15

producers of academic writing: writing which, moreover, results in the qualifications

that enable them to become the academics of tomorrow. The attitudes and behaviours
that they adopt whilst students may, consequently, have some bearing on future norms
and practices within academia. Indeed, there are some grounds for this sort of normalization argument in that it has been widely suggested that plagiarism within universities has its roots in students becoming used to the practice whilst they were pupils in
school. And it is certainly the case that plagiarism does appear to be on the increase
with 77% of the 500 plus UK academics who responded to a Times Higher Education
Supplement (THES) online poll saying that they saw plagiarism by students to be a
growing problem (Gill 2008, see also Park 2003) whilst a Higher Education Academy
and Joint Information Systems Committee report published in May 2008 (Tennant and
Duggan 2008) states that in a survey of 93 UK higher education institutions, a total of
9229 cases of student plagiarism were recorded in one year.1 These figures tell us
nothing about whether or not this is a higher incidence than in the past because there
are no figures for comparison: which in itself is significant. However, inter alia, the
growing frequency with which plagiarism seems to be being discussed in publications
like the THES and the inauguration in 2004 of a biannual International Conference on
Plagiarism (http://www.plagiarismconference.com) contribute to the mounting
evidence that student cheating in general, and plagiarism in particular are becoming
more common and more widespread, encouraging Alschuler and Blimling (1995) to
speak of epidemic cheating (Park 2003, 471).
When I was a student, back in the mid-1970s, I saw plagiarism in much the same
light as torturing babies. That is, as a shocking, heinous, monstrous thing that a very
small number of wicked people did. Yes, I was nave and well-indoctrinated with
Catholic guilt too. I honestly never contemplated doing it and indeed, if I had, I
suspect that the effort required to track down sources within texts would have been
as great as writing the piece myself in the first place. I also attended a small teachers training college so plagiarizing fellow, or even previous, students essays was a
bit of a non-starter because the same lecturer would be likely to mark, or to have
marked in the past, anything anyone might copy. I suppose that it is possible that
some students did pass off un-attributed quotes as their own and there may even
have been those who submitted work done by friends attending other institutions but
no cases ever came to light and I doubt that many occurred. The shame and disgrace
that would have been heaped on an offender would have warranted migration to the
other side of the world. Things may have been different in other institutions or
amongst students in other fields but I have been unable to find any evidence to
suggest that plagiarism by students was seen as a significant problem in any quarters
at this time.
Working in universities throughout the 1980s and 1990s I never, knowingly,
encountered any instances of plagiarism. Having said this, the large cohorts I was
concerned with would have made detection difficult (in those pre-plagiarism detection
software days) but even so, our elaborate systems of double marking would have been
likely to have turned up some cases, had there been much within-institution student
copying going on. Of course, there was scope for failing to declare sources, but the
nature of the assignments set and the level of knowledge that tutors had of the relevant
content areas and associated texts meant that this was limited.
It wasnt until 2002 that I first knowingly encountered plagiarism when, within a
week, I read a book and then a masters dissertation which repeated the selfsame unattributed text word for word. Since then, I have, personally, come across five more

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P. Sikes

cases. Some people may consider this low, but my present institution only teaches
postgraduate courses and I myself, like the majority of my colleagues, only work with
doctoral, and masters, level students. I do not, therefore, come into contact with the
same sorts of numbers that are involved in most undergraduate courses. The greater
part of the work that my students do is around their own research in fields that I
know at least a little about and where I have some familiarity with the literature. In
addition, the close and personal nature of the supervisory relationship makes attempting to plagiarize a more tricky business although not, of course, impossible. As a
department, we do use software that detects when students have taken material from
electronic sources and which can indicate significant discrepancies in writing style.
This has revealed a low, but none the less existing, level of plagiarism in relation to
the assignment components of courses, despite all of our attempts, through handbooks, guidance notes and teaching sessions both to make it clear what plagiarism is,
and to spell out what the consequences of indulging in it are (see Brown and Howell
2001 on the (in)efficacy of such approaches). We havent (re)introduced exams under
traditional conditions of surveillance, which is the strategy that some courses have
adopted, although it has been discussed as a last resort possibility, were incidence of
plagiarism to rise even further.
Inevitably, the growth of the Internet bears a large part of the blame for much of
the increase because it makes plagiarism so easy (see Ashworth, Bannister, and
Thorne 1997; Park 2003; Roberts 2008), and not just through the straightforward
cutting and pasting of sections of writing. Now, as techniques for detection of such
cheating make it a risky option, there is evidence to show a rise in the numbers of webbased advertisements for organizations and individuals who will, for a fee, write
bespoke essays and dissertations at all levels (Lancaster and Clarke 2008). Whilst
some might prefer to define the use of such services as straightforward cheating, it can
be considered plagiarism in that it involves claiming to be the author of words that
other people have actually written.
To check out the extent to which this sort of thing might be going on I did a Google
search, using the words, buy an essay which yielded 842,000 references. The first
mentioned agency, Oxbridge Essays Advice, proudly declared it was:
The UKs first and only provider of 1st Class and 2:1 essays and dissertations customedited by 1000+ experts from Oxford University and Cambridge University. We also
custom-edit PhD theses, Masters dissertations and undergraduate essays. (http://
www.oxbridgeessaysadvice.com/?gclid=CPjKw7O9gpICFQ6jQwod13IQ-Q)

Masterpapers (http://www.masterpapers.com/prices.php) in second position, and

somewhat less discreetly, provided sample prices with sliding scales for urgency and
a discount rate for frequent users. Here I learned that a 6000 word Masters level essay
would cost 307.94 if ordered 14 days in advance, rising to 541.15 if delivered
within 24 hours. I was not entirely surprised by this because, recently, a friend of mine
inadvertently and briefly became an employee of such a company when she applied
for a job, advertised in The Guardian, as a researcher. She was asked to send in two
pieces of her academic research writing together with a scanned copy of her degree
certificate. Having done this she was informed all via email that she had got the
job and that rates of pay were 80 per 2000 words of 2:1 standard academic writing.
Quicker delivery times would levy fees of up to 160 per 2000 words and higher standard work of up to 320 per 2000 words (private email, 2008). Recognizing what she

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International Journal of Research & Method in Education

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had got herself into she immediately wrote back and said she was not prepared to work
as a cheat and just as promptly was informed that she was sacked. Clearly though, not
every one takes the same position as Nicky did and this means that some of us may,
on occasion, be reading and assessing work produced by someone other than the
person whose name or identification number is on it. Furthermore, we may be being
duped by fellow academics who are working for these agencies (although it is hard to
imagine how anyone currently employed in higher education would be able to find the
time to moonlight in this way).
Again, these outfits are not new: I remember being shocked and appalled over
30 years ago on hearing that a friend of a friend, a woman who had a brilliant PhD but
no job and a baby to support on her own, was doing such work. Rather, it is the ease
of access to them courtesy of the internet that has changed things, as well as the
growth in the market for such services. Nowadays far more people are in higher
education, at all levels from bachelor through to doctorate. Undoubtedly too, more is
at stake for a greater number of folk, since credentialism and qualification inflation
and the associated consequences of widening participation in higher education tend to
make it increasingly important to possess better and higher degrees. These factors give
rise to demand that some are ready to satisfy.
And maybe as well, there has been a shift in moral and other values resulting in
different perceptions of what is acceptable. This supposition is given some support
through the findings of studies (e.g. Ashworth, Bannister, and Thorne 1997; Sheard
et al. 2002; Briggs 2003; Park 2003; Smith and Ridgway 2008) which have sought to
investigate students perceptions and understandings of cheating and plagiarism.
These various projects have found: that there are multiple and complex reasons as to
why students plagiarize; that it is a mistake to suppose that the meaning of plagiarism is unequivocal; that different cultural groups take a very different perspective
on using other peoples work without attribution, sometimes seeing this as a respectful thing to do; that some instances of plagiarism are viewed as being more serious
than others; that students do not expect to be caught; that students will often justify
and rationalize the plagiaristic activities of themselves and their friends; that helping friends pass assignments is seen as honourable and ethically acceptable if not
actually, commendable; that there is considerable uncertainty about what constitutes
plagiarism; and that students often consider the punitive action taken when plagiarism is detected, as excessively severe. We cannot know whether or not such findings would have been obtained were similar studies to have been conducted back in
the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and given the relatively small numbers of students in
higher education in those days, the grounds for comparison would be limited.
However, my gut reaction is that a more straightforward, clear cut and shared notion
of what was right and acceptable practice would have been expressed, even if this
did not accurately represent personal experience and belief or the incidence of
plagiarism either.
Plagiarism and academics
The studies quoted above revealed confusion about what plagiarism actually consists
of and my own experience is also that some students do appear to have genuine difficulties understanding what is involved, even after detailed explanation. Academics,
however, do not really have credible recourse to the same excuse. Nevertheless, every
so often a high-profile case hits the headlines, plagiarism is revealed and someone is

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P. Sikes

disgraced and suspended or sacked (e.g. see the case of a dean of a prestigious business school reported in Tahir 2008; and the story of the celebrity psychiatrist, Raj
Persaud, in Jenkins 2008). Each person who plagiarizes no doubt has their own,
specific reasons for why they do it, but it seems reasonable to assume that wanting to
get on and to advance career and reputation, lack of faith in ones own ability, and
some confidence that they will get away with it usually play a part. Plagiarism by
academics of other academics writing seems a much more chancy business than it is
for students though. This is because the probability of detection is so much greater
given that peers interested in a particular field are likely to read much of the
published work connected with it and hence will be in a good position to spot
offences. Many ills are already blamed on the Research Assessment Exercise (e.g.
Sparkes 2007), but in the UK and other countries which use similar publicationsbased systems of rating and funding of higher education, the pressure they place on
academics to produce papers and books could well lead some people to take shortcuts and to plagiarize. Criteria for tenure and promotion can also have the same
consequences.
Stories go the rounds about academics who plagiarize or steal the work of
research assistants, junior colleagues and students either outright or more subtly by
claiming co-authorship. Conversations with older academics suggest that, in the past
and particularly in the natural, physical and medical sciences, this sort of thing was
considered to be normal and was seen, in some laboratories, as part of the apprenticeship process rather than as nefarious practice. Understandings and conventions
regarding what is meant by where names are placed when there are multiple authors,
can also come in to play here but coming second to a well-known name is certainly
preferable to not being acknowledged at all.
Ironically perhaps, given its supposed role in upholding standards, the anonymous
peer reviewing process can itself provide plagiarizing opportunities. This is because
unscrupulous individuals can take ideas and also sections of writing from papers they
have been asked to review and then pass them off as their own. Furthermore, they
can advise that editors reject the paper they came from, thus further clearing the
decks for themselves. As there is a time lag between submission and publication, and
because the original author may not read the journal in which the plagiarized piece
appears, the chances of detection of this type of theft are low. And having identified
a potential incident, proving it is likely to be a protracted and extremely difficult
process. Something of this nature happened to a friend of mine who, a number of
years ago and at the start of his career, submitted a paper to a leading journal. Major
revisions were recommended but because other projects were pressing, my friend did
not have the time required for reworking. A couple of years later, he was surprised to
read a very slightly altered version of the paper in another publication. Because the
greater part of the piece was word for word what he had written nearly three years
previously, there seemed little chance that this was co-incidental. At the time he
chose to do nothing, taking comfort in the moral high ground. Looking back,
however, he realized that he probably should have written to the editor of the journal
he had originally sent his paper to, enclosing copies both of that paper and of the
recently published one, highlighting the plagiarized sections and asking who had
been the reviewer.
The whole issue of plagiarism is complicated by the way in which we unwittingly
quote others all the time in our speaking and writing (anonymous reviewers
comment) because we like the work that particular words and phrases do and

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consequently incorporate them in our own vocabularies. Then there is the possibility
of simultaneous discovery, that is, when two or more people come up with the same
idea and/or way of expressing it at the same time. This happens in all areas of
academia and there have been literary cases too. Academic work is social work
conducted within communities, it is subject to zeitgeist and the influence of fashion
and perhaps the wonder is really that there are relatively few instances where there is
conflict about original generation, origin and re-presentation. Nowadays, intellectual
property and copyright legislation are there to register and protect ownership but for
most academics and particularly, perhaps, for those working in the social sciences and
the arts and humanities, these sorts of protection come in to play quite a way down the
line. For instance, people may write a number of drafts which may be presented at
conferences or in teaching sessions before they finally publish and each stage offers
opportunities for appropriation. In any case, in such instances, proving deliberate
plagiarism undertaken with a view to deceive is by no means easy as the collapse of
legal challenges against authors like Dan Brown, Ian McEwan and Thomas Keneally
demonstrate.
Self-plagiarism
Self-plagiarism can seem to be an offence of quite another order to that committed
when passing off somebody elses words as ones own. After all, reworking and
developing ideas plays an important part both in the advancement of knowledge and
in the construction of an academic career. Many people have re-crafted their doctoral
theses as books, chapters in edited collections and papers for journals. In addition,
established academics and specialists in particular areas are often asked to write on
their field, and, over the years, it can become difficult to say things in a significantly
different and innovative fashion. Then there are times when the same content needs
either to be presented in different ways or in different places in order to make it accessible to different audiences. However, these sorts of expert comment, incremental
development and stylistic tailoring are substantially different from people reproducing
and republishing their own work either in entirety or in substantial sections without
acknowledging its original appearance. Most, if not all, journals state that papers must
not be simultaneously submitted elsewhere, and permissions have to be obtained for
reproductions in other texts and forms since without these copyright laws can be
violated. (The whole area of copyright and who it serves is complex and I have chosen
not to discuss it further here.)
Once again, it is probably fair to say that it is the pressure to publish that is one of
the key influences that can lead people to indulge in dubious practices such as:
textual re-use; multiple publication; redundant publication; dual publication; duplicate
publication; re-using text from previous published papers; fragmented publication;
salami-slicing (data fragmentation); chain of textual re-use self-plagiarism (piecing
together 10% or more of any one previously published paper to create an original
paper). (Bretag and Carapiet 2008, slide 19)

but, breaking copyright laws aside, does it matter if people self-plagiarize?

Leila Green (2005) suggests that it does because it:
is detrimental to scientific progress and bad for our academic community. Flooding
conferences and journals with near-identical papers makes searching for information

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P. Sikes
relevant to a particular topic harder than it has to be. It also rewards those authors who
are able to break down their results into overlapping least-publishable-units over those
who publish each result only once. Finally, whenever a self-plagiarised paper is allowed
to be published, another, more deserving paper, is not.

By preferring the term recycling fraud, and likening the offence to the sort of
deception used by a used car dealer who changes a cars mileage counter to make it
appear to be far less used, Irving Hexham (2005) casts self-plagiarism in quite a
serious, and an illegal, light. Whilst acknowledging most writers do some legitimate
recycling, Hexham focuses on the attempt to deceive which:

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happens when no indication is given that the work is being recycled and an effort is made
to disguise the original text. The issue is one of the extent of the deception. Disguising a
text occurs when an author makes cosmetic changes that cause the same article, chapter,
or book to look significantly different when in reality it actually remains unchanged in
most of its wording and its central argument. Changing such things as paragraph breaks,
capitalization, or the substitution of technical terms using different languages that leads
readers to believe they are reading something completely new is recycling fraud when
such changes are the only ones an author makes to a text.

Many academics reading about self-plagiarism may find themselves feeling a tad
uncomfortable. It is easy to find oneself re-using phrases and even paragraphs which
we may feel are especially eloquent, in subsequent texts without citing their original
placement. If the recycled sections are short then that may be acceptable. However,
consider the following:
A pilot study by Tracey Bretag and Saadia Carapiet from the University of South Australia
found that 60 per cent of authors in a random sample of 269 papers from the Web of
Science social science and humanities database had self-plagiarised at least once in the
period 200306. Self-plagiarism was defined quite generously as occurring when 10 per
cent or more text from any single previous publication was reused without a citation.
The truth is that if these authors had self-cited in each case, it is unlikely that the editors
would have published their work because they would have seen that it had all been
published before, Dr Bretag said. (Attwood 2008)

On the basis of Bretag and Carapiets (2008) study, self-plagiarism would seem to be
common practice. And furthermore and when it comes to books, what of the case of
second, third and so on, editions of what is essentially the same text? It may feel good
to have achieved the sorts of sales which make a new version possible but often any
changes that are made are really very minor. Then there is the rise in collections of
previously published papers. Given that these works usually go under a new and overarching title, they can offer scope for substantial double counting and for boosting/
padding CVs at the cost of minimal effort.
Theft
Plagiarism, as I have been using the term, is clearly a form of theft in that it involves
stealing other peoples words and ideas. Throughout this paper, I have been talking
about the ways in which the Internet makes it possible for people to cut or rather,
take an exact copy of words from one piece of writing and paste them into another
place. In days gone by, when people wrote with pens on paper, one would occasionally

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hear of the physical theft of work, of filing cabinets being broken into or of papers
being taken from desks. These stories often concluded with the appearance, some time
in the future, of an academic work appearing under the chief suspects name, which
contained remarkably similar ideas and or, sections of writing very like those
purported to be in the stolen document. Making copies of work, however easy the
current technology makes this, is something that people are often lax about but in pen
and paper days it was definitely so complicated as to be almost unheard of, thus proof
that work had been stolen was likely to be lacking. Nor would it usually be easy to
interest the police in investigating such an alleged crime. In mentioning physical theft,
rare though I suspect it is and has been, my intention is simply to indicate that some
people will go to desperate lengths and that academic dishonesty occurs in the real
world and not just in Inspector Morses Oxford.
Collusion
As I have said, I was prompted to write this paper having been reminded of an incident of academic collusion over the writing of a book. That case came about because
someone decided to help a colleague who had got themselves into a mess and was not
able to meet final deadlines. Had the book in question not been produced, the consequences would have been serious and could even have resulted in dismissal. In similar
vein, I have also heard tales of senior staff writing papers which were then published
under the name of junior colleagues, the aim being to produce a stronger CV and
hence jobs and/or promotion. And then there is the work that supervisors may do to
bring their students theses up to scratch. These activities could all be described as
collusion.
The studies of attitudes towards cheating and plagiarism which were referenced
earlier (Ashworth, Bannister, and Thorne 1997; Park 2003) found that some students
saw collusion as honourable and in terms of being loyal to, and supportive of, friends
and hence as being ethically and morally justifiable. No doubt academics colluding
with students or colleagues would say the same. The point can be seen but nevertheless, deception and dishonesty are involved and people get qualifications, certification, critical acclaim, promotion, continued employment or whatever, on false
pretences and on the basis of some other persons work. It is not just an issue of altruism and even though there may be unique and even extenuating circumstances, the
cheat and fraud have still, strictly speaking, been perpetrated.
Discussion
When I first began to work on this paper, in March 2008, my literature searches turned
up numerous references to university students and school children and plagiarism,
with many of the articles, papers or reports dealing specifically with IT- and
computer-related subjects or business studies. When I turned my attention to focus on
academics and plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics more
generally, the overwhelming majority of publications were in the fields of medicine
and medical sciences (as Macnab and Thomas 2007 have also noted). And there were
a lot of them.
My search also turned up organizations concerned with helping journal
editors uphold ethical standards in the conduct and publication of bio-medical research
and scholarly papers such as the World Association of Medical Editors (http://

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P. Sikes

www.wame.org/), The Office of Research Integrity (http://ori.dhhs.gov/) and the

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/).
Members of these associations could seek advice and view and contribute case studies
on various types of plagiarism, fabrication, publication frauds and issues relating to
peer review. I could find nothing comparable in the field of education specifically or
the social sciences more generally and that is why so much of what I have had to say
in this paper has been anecdotal. However, since March, four major journal publishing
houses (including Taylor and Francis, publishers of this journal) have joined COPE,
enabling all of their respective journal editors to make use of its guidelines, and access
its services and database. Around 5300 editors representing a wide range of disciplines
now belong to this organization alone (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/). And
they belong because, as the Senior Vice-President of Wiley-Blackwell said: Instances
of plagiarism, false authorship, and unethical publishing behaviour are now, unfortunately, becoming more frequent (see http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/).
Within educational research, questions of truth and lies have tended to focus on
informants and what they tell to researchers, although even with regard to this area,
little attention has been paid to what authors should do if they uncover deception
(Sikes 2000, is an exception). Compared with the medical sciences, we do seem to be
somewhat lagging behind, not least with regard to detection of dishonesty and promotion of integrity in writing but also in terms of actively working to make the peer
review process as effective as it could be. I recall receiving my first paper to review
and being extremely nervous about how to go about the job: I only really had the
reviews I had had of my own papers to go on. This is not unusual. A journal editor
once told me a story about being horrified by the vicious and unconstructive
comments that a reviewer wrote. These were so unpleasant that the editor decided to
speak to the person who had written them. She then told him that shed done it like
that because, on the basis of her own experience of being on the receiving end, she
thought this was what was required. There clearly is a need for education here and one
that is beginning to be addressed through, for example, workshops at the British
Education Research Association conference.
Human nature being as it seems to be, all editors of academic publications need
to actively attend to authorial honesty if their journals and publishing houses are to
be able to claim that they are maintaining the highest academic standards and that
their endeavours support the quest for advancing knowledge. The ubiquity of the
Internet, the ever-intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a general
shift in perceptions of what constitutes bad plagiarism and collusion which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean that the time
may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal editors of how they
regard and deal with the whole area. As Macnab and Thomas note, at the present
time the education community has no formal procedures for dealing with
misconduct (2007, 341). Given the significant role that journal editors do appear to
play in shaping fields of study (Wellington and Nixon 2005), they would seem to
have considerable responsibility for developing some. Maybe membership of COPE
will help.
Finally, I want to return to the questions which I posed at the start of this piece:
Do you know who wrote this paper? How do you know? Well: I can only promise you
that I did; that I have had no reason in this instance to disguise my identity; that it is
all my own work; and that it has not appeared in any other publication. This is what I
expect when I read work which does not make it clear that other circumstances pertain

International Journal of Research & Method in Education

23

(e.g. statements to the effect that a similar version of the piece has been published
elsewhere). Its important too, for me to be able to trust authors if I am going to make
use of, refer to, or quote from, their work in my own writing. I dont like to be fooled
and I dont think many of us do.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two reviewers whose comments on an earlier version have led to
what I believe is a better paper. As one of them wrote: there is also the interesting case of
international students being helped with their English by fellow students going through their
work improving their English but perhaps in the process improving the quality of their
argument. This is sometimes done by fellow academics in relation to articles to be submitted
for publication (2008, anon). Indeed. Thank you.

Note
1. These figures tell us nothing about the intentions of the reported plagiarizers and conse-

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quently will probably include people who made genuine mistakes as well as those who
intended to deceive.

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http://ori.dhhs.gov/ (accessed March 14, 2008)

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