I need some help!! A friend of mine just realised they've plagiarised by accident. Their work is original but they found a few sentences that have been added to their lit review chapter word by word. Not sure if that makes a difference but it's referenced.

Realistically I believe it's highly unlikely anyone will know but they're worried as they still have their viva to come. Any ideas what I can advise them?

My gut feeling says deny any knowledge IF anyone brings it up at the viva...

Any other ideas/thoughts?

No experience of this myself but I do know that when I have marked UG essays and they go through Turnitin (or similar software, I presume doctoral theses go through this as well), they are allowed a certain margin. I queried an essay as to me it was full of material that clearly was not the student's own work, and it was only 3% (of what I don't know), and that wasn't considered to be plagiarism. That was only a 2500 word essay, so in an 80,000+ thesis I don't think a few sentences will be an issue, if it gets picked up on in the first place.

If someone brings it up at the viva the last thing to do is deny it. If it is brought up, that means it's been spotted and checked, and denying it is risking the degree. It might get picked up I'm afraid, as the likelihood is that the external at least will be familiar with the literature and plagiarised sections do tend to stick out to experienced markers. I would suggest your friend gets some advice from the students' union - I would imagine, there's an academic advice person, who could say what's best to do in the circumstances - being proactive might be better than keeping fingers crossed. Does the thesis go through turnitin or someone similar where you are? If so, s/he needs to own up before being accused. If not, one idea might be to ask the supervisor to flag the offending passage to the examiners but alongside it, send a scan of the whole thesis showing that it's an isolated incident. But whatever s/he does, they need to make sure, it's removed from the final thesis post viva.

If its 1 or 2 sentences, then even if it does go through turn it in, you can 't really say whether it's plagarised or not, particularly if its referenced well. To be honest, I've read many a journal who cite someone and blatantly copy a sentence to explain something! (without quoting).

If it were me, I'd tell him/her to write it down formally on a bit of paper saying "I am aware that line 4, page 5 is word for word and therefore I will correct this and paraphrase appropriately" or something similar. Then take that piece of paper into the viva, but I wouldn't get it out unless they ask specifically about those areas of the thesis. At that point he/she can whip it out and sheepishly say "well yes, I'd spotted that mistake too and was going to correct it" but you don't want to point it out unless the examiners do IMO.

TBH I doubt the examiners will pick it up (depending on the size of the thesis). I had accidentally put the name of the organisation into my thesis THREE times - and they didn't have a clue where the research had been done and specifically asked me where in the viva!

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It's inevitable you will replicate previous people's work and you have to make sure your own wording and stamp are on it when you submit. I was third in a 9 year project that produced 3 PhDs. Whilst a lot of the donkey work of finding the literature was avoided as a result, I had to produce a critical appraisal that was distinct from my two predecessors. That appraisal fortunately for me showed one or two minor weaknesses and omissions, one of which proved important to the distinctiveness of my own work. Some new literature allowed me to take a new angle on the criticism and discuss a potential flaw in a major author's work.

If it's just the odd sentence here and there, just reword those sentences and try to deliver your own (if possible) slightly different take with your critical appraisal in the literature review. You can agree, but you might add a few word why you agree (or disagree).

If you've somehow replicated the odd sentence and it's too late to change, just say you're aware of them and you'll deal with these come any corrections you are given. The very occasional sentence is bound to come out virtually the same.

Hope that helps.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Your friend will probably have a list of minor errors to take into the viva, which they could add this to. If these verbatim sentences are spotted they can say they had noticed they had omitted to put inverted commas round the quote. If not spotted, just make it into a quote before the final printing/binding. That way it is just an acknowledged typo, not unwitting plagiarism :-)

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions.

I have no idea if the thesis will go through any software and I agree that even if it does, it may not be picked up. Unfortunately, when the past 3 years of your 'life' are at stake, I think we're bound to get stressed out and formulate a plan of action for the 'what if' situation.

We have discussed owning up to it beforehand but my friend doesn't get much support from sups or uni so it'd be a gamble. Personally I quite like the idea of writing on a piece of paper in advance (thanks Sneaks!). I don't think we can use the inverted comas though as the sentences are consecutive :( great idea though.

I'll pass them on to my friend and let them decide what they want to do... if anyone else has any suggestions or comments, we're all ears (or eyes?)!!

Denying all knowledge is a terrible idea - if your friend made a genuine mistake then denial of it will make him/her look guilty.

It's almost certainly the case that the thesis will have been run through plagiarism checking softwarre, though as others have said, it might be too minor a case to pick up. I used to copy edit for a student academic magazine, and I could spot a mile off when people had pasted in text from elsewhere, cos the tone/style would change. Hopefully a PhD candidate will write well enough by this stage that such an error wouldn't be glaringly obvious, but I wouldn't assume the mistake would go unnoticed just because it wasn't detected by software.

If it was me I would almost be inclined to take pre-emptive action and speak to a graduate tutor to highlight the issue as a genuine error. In a long thesis, accidental plagiarism of a few lines would, I imagine, hardly be grounds to penalise a student, particularly if it's a genuine mistake.

Yeah, I can see your point. She may look like the guilty party if she denies it whereas if she acts now, they'll know it was a genuine mistake from her part and she is trying to fix it.

We're at different unis and I'm not sure what the support is like there. Saying that, I've told her that it's her decision to make and all I can do is provide her with ideas/different angles.

Thanks for sharing these information. I also used the Plagiarism Checker tool. This is very useful for teachers, students webmasters and all professionals.
http://theplagiarismchecker.com/