Plagiarism

Sridhar GodavarthyAshish Sethi

Most content presented here(unless cited) is our own thought and does not pertain to any specific individual, nor do most of them have valid sources. These are just the outcome of our chains of thought. Apply them at your own risk. As always, please consult your professor before getting yourself involved in any publication

What is plagiarism?• Webster A piece of writing that has been

copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work

• Oxford take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as one’s own

In a sense of humour:• Some countries: Doing it(as above) AND getting caught• Talent: Doing it(as above) AND not getting caught - well

technically impossible as the time space is infinite

Easier way out

Think in terms of digital logic:Fail any one of the AND cases above and you are

safe. So:• 1. Do NOT copyIf you have to copy, • 2. Do NOT present as yours

take (the work or idea of someone else) and pass it off as one’s own ur own[Oxford]

Google Scholar

• Google Scholar's caption:

Standing on the shoulders of giants.

ever wonder why?

• Engineers( and all scholars for that matter) are weird minded. They seem to want recognition more than anything else( of course - to the exclusion of money)

• When you build off somebody elses research, all that you are doing is: using them as a step and climbing higher than them

• Citing people makes them feel as giants - keeps everyone happy - makes them feel huge(like giants) and helps you improve

• If you do not cite, all that you are doing is literally stamping them - and would you be happy if someone did that to you?

So, how do you (not) do it?

• Following are some of the steps that we follow. You might try applying them to see their effectiveness or, you might have you own tricks that you may share with us

Never copy

• Never copy word for word. When you read a work, always get the gist of it and reproduce the gist

Methods to improve:– read a paper, give it a day and rewrite it without seeing

the paper. No way - you can reproduce it word for word. If you feel you cannot, you have not read the paper enough. repeat the process until you can

– Explain the paper to a friend( in a different language if possible) and ask him to repeat it to you. Use his words.

– Think of it as a translation exercise - it is always the whole thing -never sentence to sentence or word to word

Quotations

• Often, some sentences are irreplaceable.– Eg: Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your

ears• There is a way out for these:– If you really feel that a specific sentence needs to

be repeated as is, put it in Double quotes.• Eg: As Shakespeare wrote: “Friends, Romans,

countrymen , lend me your ears” [Julius Caesar 3/2]– Of course, most reviewers do not think highly of

papers that have more than 2-3 quotes [Dr. Ranga]

Standard Definitions

• Standard definitions/formulae, papers that are more then 30-40 years old do not need citations [Dr. Kasturi, Dr. Goldgof]

Eg:• Fourier series• Hough transform• Eccentricity of an ellipse• Dijkstra's algorithm

Time

• Always have enough time. • Never write a paper the day before it is due.

Have atleast a week to review. • Of course, your professor is most likely going

to ask you to change everything in his review• so maybe two weeks...

Ego browsing

• Have you heard of this term: "Ego Browsing"? That's what some people call searching the Web for your own name. [http://www.allbusiness.com/personal-finance/credit-cards-credit-record/1152062-1.html]

• Most people do it increasing your chance of getting caught

References to the web

• Some people consider web sites as a "Not valid reference". You might want to discuss it with your professor because:– You want that content, your professor does not

want that reference, but if you use it without citing it, well... You know what will happen

Your publications• Even your own content is copyrighted. • Most of the articles you submit to

journals/conferences become copyrighted material.

• Read the authors' rights before your use that content.

• In some cases, you might have to request for rights before using it.

• I think the thesis/dissertation becomes USF property

Data collection• The data that you use might be copyrighted too.

In my case, I use human faces. there are various levels of authorization that I have. Refer USF IRB– Some people agree for using their data in research,

but not for publishing– Some people agree for publishing as long as they are

not identifiable– There are restrictions on how you store data– Some people agree for normal faces, but not for

camoflauged faces• be sure to consider all these

Agencies/Industries

• Projects that are done for agencies/companies will definitely have their own copyrights.

• Be aware of their policies

Is it worth it

• Remember - you are jeopardizing your studies, career and whole life and in most cases- those of your professor and co-authors too.

• Spending some extra time rechecking is definitely more beneficial than regretting it for the rest of your life

• If you are in doubt, talk to your professor, or do not submit it. You can always try for another conference

The only advantage of Plagiarism

[http://www.k-state.edu/honor/students/plagiarismexample.html]

Example• The first step in achieving such MAV autonomy is basic stability and control. Here, we

present such a flight stability and control system, based on vision processing of video from a camera on-board our MAVs. In this paper, we first motivate the use of computer vision for such a control system, and describe our vision-based horizon detection algorithm, which forms the basis of the flight stability system presented here...[S.M. Ettinger, M.C. Nechyba, P.G. Ifju, and M. Waszak, “Vision Guided Flight Stability and Control for Micro Air Vehicles,” Advanced Robotics, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 617-40, 2003.]

Stability and control are the first steps to achieve MAV autonomy. There is an interesting approach based on processing the video from on-board cameras where the horizon is detected and is then used for achieving flight stability[…]

• [...] describes an application of line detection and presents an interesting computer vision approach for automatic piloting of MAVs using video.

Tomorrow’s Professor

• https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/tomorrows-professor

• [Dr. Katkoori]