The Plagiarism Decision Process: The Role of Pressure and Rationalization

McCuen, r. H. (2008). The Plagiarism Decision Process: The Role of Pressure and Rationalization. IEEE Transactions on Education, 51(2).

Plagiarism includes not only the wrong citation of others’ ideas, but also self-plagiarism, dual publishing and ghost authorship. McCuen proposes a 5-step decision process framework for education of plagiarism and for closer examination of the act of plagiarism. Plagiarism is viewed as a process of decision making rather than merely a result. He mentions value-based processes, another proposed processes, on plagiarism and points out its lack of empirical evidences. Being different from the valued-based processes, McCune’s decision process of plagiarism includes two factors: pressure and rationalization. Pressure functions as a stimulus at early stage, including internal and self-imposed pressure; rationalization, as justification, is to avoid guilty feeling. Ethics education, as suggested by McCuen, is the best prevention, and not only the students, but also mentors (advisors), administrator and young faculty, would need to have correct and enough knowledge of plagiarism. Many unintended plagiarism are resulted from a lack of understanding of the unethical behavior and schools should provide enough instruction for those who are writing research papers. Mentors need to be sensitive to the writing pressure of their advisees.
Though there are many grey area in plagiarism, ethics education is still very much needed for avoiding any potential damage and embarrassment. Taking NCTU as an example, unintentional/intentional ghost authorship does occur. (I didn’t know this is a kind of plagiarism before reading this paper.) As once an extremely stressed graduate student, I personally can imagine pressure being a stimulus of the unethical act and ethical maturity would increase after realizing the consequences. The ethics education is indeed supposed to be a part of orientation of anyone who might write research papers. While the 5-step framework does make sense, it requires more empirical data and cases to support its validity. Cultural context should be considered as well, as Taiwan being a culture highly values teachers/professors, which might contribute to ghost authorship.