SIU plagiarism report could bolster Poshard's defense

As plagiarism allegations dog Southern Illinois University's president, a panel the school created last year to define the practice may have bolstered his defense, concluding plagiarism can be unintentional.

The panel's chairman on Friday called the 17-page report's release coincidental and unrelated to the unfolding flap over whether Glenn Poshard plagiarized parts of his 1974 master's thesis and 1984 doctoral dissertation at the university's flagship Carbondale campus.

"The guts of the report were really done much earlier" than when Poshard's troubles first surfaced late last month, said Lain Adkins, director of the University Press at the Carbondale school.

The panel of employees at the university's Carbondale and Edwardsville campuses was created in the wake of claims that Walter Wendler, then chancellor at the Carbondale school, lifted sections from a strategic plan for a Texas school where he worked, then used them in SIU's long-range plan.

Poshard ultimately fired Wendler for not being a team player -- not because of the plagiarism questions. Now facing plagiarism claims himself, Poshard insists he may have mistakenly left out some citations but didn't purposely lift material from another source.

Poshard has said he would not resign, and his boss -- the university's board of trustees -- again on Thursday voiced its confidence in his ability to continue running the 35,000-student system.

Adkins said the report, ultimately headed for the trustees' consideration, was not influenced by the flap over Poshard or meant to influence the matter.

"We were so close to having this done, I kind of stuck my head in the sand and finished the report," he said.

But Adkins conceded the panel's finding that "plagiarism is not always intentional" may help Poshard's cause.

The report defines plagiarism as "presenting existing work as one's own," adding that "any ideas or materials taken from another source, including one's own work, must be fully acknowledged unless the information is common knowledge."

But plagiarism "may also be inadvertent or unintended and, in addition, can result from a writer's lack of familiarity with the citation and 'common knowledge' conventions of the discipline or field within which the person is writing," according to the report.

Moreover, it continued, "many institutional contexts exist where plagiarism is an accepted and even encouraged discourse strategy. And finally, not all plagiaristic activity reaches a level of significance."

The report suggested plagiarism, while an "age-old problem," can be especially pervasive with digital access that makes it "easier than ever to deliberately or inadvertently borrow another's work."

"We're very proud of the work that we've done," said Gerald Nelms, an English professor at the Cardondale school who served on the panel. The bulk of the work, he said, was done "way before any of this mess" involving Poshard.

David Gross, a spokesman for Poshard, declined to publicly discuss the report Friday, other than to say the president was grateful of the panel's work in "an effort to address this issue in a responsible and deliberative manner."

The committee wants the anti-plagiarism policy to be a blueprint that could be tweaked by the university's campuses to fit individual departments' research and writing needs.

One suggested change to the Carbondale school's policy, for example, would include adding that "cases of plagiarism can be especially complicated, because the acts involved may be intended or unintended."

The report's release came the same week a panel of professors at the Carbondale school launched its review of Poshard's master's thesis and doctoral dissertation, trying to ferret out claims that parts of both works were plagiarized. The group's recommendations will be given to the school's chancellor, then forwarded to the board of trustees.

The allegations surfaced Aug. 30 when SIU's student newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, reported that at least 30 sections in Poshard's 111-page doctoral dissertation were not attributed to their original sources or put in quotation marks to show they weren't Poshard's writing.

On Sept. 10, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Poshard's master's thesis contained sentences found nearly verbatim in sources published earlier, without attribution.

Panel's findings

Late last year, a Southern Illinois University panel was created to review the system's plagiarism policy, among other things pinning down what is plagiarism. Some of their findings, released this week:

• "Plagiarism is defined as presenting existing work as one's own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source, including one's own work, must be fully acknowledged unless the information is common knowledge. To avoid plagiarizing, one must not adopt or reproduce material from existing work without acknowledging the original source."

• Plagiarism "may be inadvertent or unintended, and can result from a writer's lack of familiarity with the citation and 'common knowledge' conventions of the discipline or field within which the person is writing."

• SIU's must be to try to eliminate unintentional plagiarism by educating all members of the university community as to what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

• "There might be extenuating circumstances involved even in cases of substantial intentional plagiarism. While such circumstances might mitigate punishment for such offenses, they cannot altogether absolve the plagiarist from punishment."

• SIU's plagiarism policy should be reviewed at the start of each academic year.

Source: Associated Press