Anyone thinking of publishing their work?
This week I’m revisiting the theme of erasure, but this time within academia. Last week, I attended a short seminar titled: Stolen Works, Stolen Lives: Racial Erasure, Exclusion and Dispossession in Academic Publishing, where academics reflected on the realities of plagiarism for researchers — which ‘involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterwards’ (Plagiarism.org, 2017).
I am not naïve to the fact that people have long co-opted (or out right stolen) the work or ideas of others. However, I found it quite shocking to personally hear the ways in which plagiarism can occur within a field in which integrity is meant to be at the core. For context, some of the speakers (and audience members using the chat box) mentioned:
- How social media could be a gateway for other people to steal ideas
- How some people within positions of power (such as PhD supervisors) use their position to pass off the ideas of others such as early career researchers, as their own
- There are legal ramifications when raising a case of plagiarism, which puts a huge amount of stress on the victim of plagiarism
It was disappointing to hear this environment exists within research. This makes me wonder how researchers can still be encouraged to undertake and publish research, while being mindful of the fact that plagiarism from peers could occur? Where does the accountability lie, when it is known that some researchers themselves are committing acts of plagiarism?
This seminar was organised by: Dr Sneha Krishnan (Moderator) and Dr Richard Baxter, University of Oxford
Panellist included:
- Prof Patricia Daley, University of Oxford
- Dr James Esson, Loughborough University
- Prof Patricia Kingori, University of Oxford
- Dr Nayanika Mathur, University of Oxford
- Dr Patrica Noxolo, Co-editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and University of Birmingham
