How to quote a plagiarized resource (or not).

With the resources being pulled (as they should) for plagiarism, should they be quoted from or not? I have several of the resources in my library that have been recently been pulled by publishers. How much value do they now have? I also don't want to forget these resources and accidentally quote from them later on. Any thoughts on how to avoid this? One extreme would be to hide them, but I think this would be overreacting.

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Dr. Keith Pang Ph.D.

Depends on the setting I would say. Academically it would be up to the professors call to allow or not. In a teaching setting without a doubt I think.

Scott E. Mahle

I also don't want to forget these resources and accidentally quote from them later on. Any thoughts on how to avoid this?

To me, these books are far too valuable to hide and still excellent resources! One option that immediately comes to mind is to prefix the title of those books with something that would remind you of the books problem. Maybe PFP=Pulled for Plagiarism. It would look like this when the book was opened, alerting you to the issue:

Bmickey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932695#Comment_932695

I use a special tag for those resources.

Ken McGuire

I suppose that professional academics may have somewhat different standards, but from my understanding of plagiarism, you site the sources you used. So if you used it and it has influence on your work, you should site it. Even if it was not appropriately intellectually honest, you still should be, and not claim someone else's work as your own. Perhaps the footnote should be something like "x, echoing y"....

Of course, if you are teaching, it would be wise to NOT include these works as assigned readings - except, of course, on a class on the dangers of plagiarism.

Dr. Keith Pang Ph.D.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932697#Comment_932697

Yeah but you can use it in a teaching...Bible Study, Sermon, etc

Lee

With the resources being pulled (as they should) for plagiarism, should they be quoted from or not?

Plagiarized works have value, you could refer to them. In an academic setting ... best to avoid them altogether. Due attribution would require you to give credit to the underlying source, which is not straightforward.

David Thomas

With the resources being pulled (as they should) for plagiarism, should they be quoted from or not?

I think I'm tracking with Ken McGuire.

Why would a person cite this source different than any other Out of Print resource? As long as a student correctly cites the source from which the material is derived, isn't he (or she) being totally ethical. I don't believe anyone is questioning the veracity of the material, just the ethics of citation in the source. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the derivative work correctly cites its source, I would deem it to be ethical.

Does a student/author have a responsibility to track down the original source of an idea? I thought that was the benefit of citing published works--it is the responsibility of a publisher to track down plagiarism. If my citation points to a self-published or non peer-reviewed resource then the reader is right to beware of potential weaknesses in my argument. Few students have the resources to track down plagiarism in all sources.

EastTN

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932722#Comment_932722

Does a student/author have a responsibility to track down the original source of an idea? I thought that was the benefit of citing published works--it is the responsibility of a publisher to track down plagiarism. If my citation points to a self-published or non peer-reviewed resource then the reader is right to beware of potential weaknesses in my argument. Few students have the resources to track down plagiarism in all sources.

That's right as a general rule, but does the situation change a bit when a) the plagiarism is well-known and widely publicized, and b) more to the point, it's something that I as a writer do in fact know about? I think it has to.

In this specific case the publisher has in fact tracked down the plagiarism, made a point of disclosing it to the scholarly community, and withdrawn the book. It doesn't seem like the right answer to say that scholarly community can carry on as usual, citing the commentary just as if this had never happened.

DAL

What’s funny is that Baker doesn’t say anything about providing a refund for those who have purchased a copy of this work. 😁

DAL

JohnB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932731#Comment_932731

In this specific case the publisher has in fact tracked down the plagiarism, made a point of disclosing it to the scholarly community, and withdrawn the book. It doesn't seem like the right answer to say that scholarly community can carry on as usual, citing the commentary just as if this had never happened.

FL made it clear that the author initiated this not the publisher.

Doc B

With the resources being pulled (as they should) for plagiarism, should they be quoted from or not?

In my opinion, no. Not if the quotation is of plagiarized material.

One of the purposes of using resources is often to track down older resources or even primary resources. So if you have a resource that has been pulled for plagiarism, go get the resource which was plagiarized and quote directly from that one.

Not all the material in a pulled resource has been plagiarized. If you wish to quote from the original (non-plagiarized) material, I see no ethical issue at all as long as you cite it properly. If your style manual calls for a notation that the source was tainted, follow your style manual. (NB: Part of making this determination is deciding the nature of the plagiarism. If it was intentional, I'd stay away from the resource altogether in most circumstances. If the plagiarism is known to be unintentional, I have no qualms citing the material.)

If your employer or academic field has a formal policy on the issue, be certain to follow the policy, opinions aside.

The only risk you run is citing something you think is original only to have to come out later as plagiarized. But then, that's always a risk. With the volume of material that's been published in history, the statistical likelihood of stating something in the same or a similar way as has been done in the past is very high. As a test, I once ran part of my dissertation through one of the online plagiarism checkers. I know for certain I didn't plagiarize my writing, because I was there when I did the research and the writing. Yet the checker found it to be something like 60% probability of being lifted from other work. I suspect that's because there's only so many ways to say some basic things about the Behrens-Fisher problem (running ANOVA under the violation of the assumptions about homoscedasticity).

(Don't ask.)

David Ames

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932713#Comment_932713

Plagiarized works have value, you could refer to them. In an academic setting ... best to avoid them altogether. Due attribution would require you to give credit to the underlying source, which is not straightforward.

Question: Yes, there are some identified resources that have been shown to be guilty of plagiarism but in general how do you know of plagiarism?

Also often resources have source resources that we do not have access to so if they do not cite the source how could check for plagiarism?

Also if we do not have access to a quoted source how do we cite that we found the quote from 'X' [original] in 'Y' [where we found it]?

Bill Shewmaker

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932695#Comment_932695

I also don't want to forget these resources and accidentally quote from them later on. Any thoughts on how to avoid this?

To me, these books are far too valuable to hide and still excellent resources! One option that immediately comes to mind is to prefix the title of those books with something that would remind you of the books problem. Maybe PFP=Pulled for Plagiarism. It would look like this when the book was opened, alerting you to the issue:

I like the idea of editing the title (PFP) to remind that this particular resource should be used sparingly and to double check quotes. Do we have a listing from Logos that would alert us to other pulled resources that we might have in our libraries so that we could begin to edit said titles to reflect the reliability of the resource?

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932695#Comment_932695

One option that immediately comes to mind is to prefix the title of those books with something that would remind you of the books problem. Maybe PFP=Pulled for Plagiarism. It would look like this when the book was opened, alerting you to the issue:

Personally tag with ?Plagiarism? plus modify titles by adding ?< prefix: (question mark reminder of known Plagiarism)

Also add another ? tag with plagiarism source: e.g. ?F.F.Bruce? for O'Brien

FYI: also have added year, series, and author prefixes to many resources (with Bible Milestones) so sorting Library results by Title is chronological.

Keep Smiling [:)]

EastTN

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932744#Comment_932744

In this specific case the publisher has in fact tracked down the plagiarism, made a point of disclosing it to the scholarly community, and withdrawn the book. It doesn't seem like the right answer to say that scholarly community can carry on as usual, citing the commentary just as if this had never happened.

FL made it clear that the author initiated this not the publisher.

I apologize for missing that. This speaks well for the author.

Lee

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932746#Comment_932746

Plagiarized works have value, you could refer to them. In an academic setting ... best to avoid them altogether. Due attribution would require you to give credit to the underlying source, which is not straightforward.

Question: Yes, there are some identified resources that have been shown to be guilty of plagiarism but in general how do you know of plagiarism?

Not sure I understand your question. The OP is talking about books declared problematic (he terms it "plagiarized" source). If one knows about said problems, avoid? You can't avoid something you don't know exists?

Also often resources have source resources that we do not have access to so if they do not cite the source how could check for plagiarism?

Practically speaking I don't think you could scrupulously check for plagiarism unless you need to go the extra mile (e.g. writing a very seminal paper or work). The academic world relies a great deal on trust.

Also if we do not have access to a quoted source how do we cite that we found the quote from 'X' [original] in 'Y' [where we found it]?

Precisely. It's a can of worms. Even if I had the underlying (i.e. plagiarized) source, I wouldn't know how to cite the "plagiaristic" source.

David Ames

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932797#Comment_932797

Precisely. It's a can of worms. Even if I had the underlying (i.e. plagiarized) source, I wouldn't know how to cite the "plagiaristic" source.

Guess that the best answer is that we do the best we can. Thanks for the reply.

Whyndell Grizzard

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932838#Comment_932838

Does anyone have a list of the resources affected by this issue so far?

Kevin A. Purcell

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932840#Comment_932840

is there a list somewhere of these books?

Scott E. Mahle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932840#Comment_932840

Does anyone have a list of the resources affected by this issue so far?

I’m not aware of a list, but here are the commentaries I can think of which have been pulled:

Varner: EEC James
O’Brien: PNTC Letter to the Ephesians; PNTC The Letter to the Hebrews; NIGTC Epistle to the Philippians; WBC Colossians/Philemon
Köstenberger: BECNT John

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932840#Comment_932840

Does anyone have a list of the resources affected by this issue so far?

I have been reflecting on the same question. I want to make sure that any of these resources that remain in my library are clearly tagged as such.

Ronald Quick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932847#Comment_932847

A lot of great comments. I will probably add a tag to these resources - Thanks.

DAL

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932851#Comment_932851

If the information is true you can present it as: “Some scholars say...” during a class or a sermon, but not for academic research.

Just my opinion.

DAL

Kristin Dantzler

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/932855#Comment_932855

I know that when I was in college many moons ago, I would not have been able to use a plagiarized resource. Out of curiosity, I had my daughter discuss the potential use of this resource with her current professors and they were unanimous in stating that this resource could not be used in an academic paper submitted to them.